Star Cycles
I have watched Venus—seen continents and seas
Unknowingly, in a dew-gem hung in the western evening
A little over the Joshua trees and aspiring yucca;
On my desert threshold envying a little that young planet
Which must yet run the course of the elements
From stone-breasted saurian down to brain and extinction,
The dissipation of water, the tamed and the dying sea.
Now she is young—as stars go—and cool in my western window.
Now, upon Mars
Deserts of red sand creep wider year by year as the false
Spring of the ice-caps lessens and fails.
The thirst-tortured Martians see earth float in their evening
As a sickle of water, drinking her light
Amid the thin harvest of empty sea beds, worshiping
