While the green Ocean rammed the granite rocks, splashing the quick drift up their crooked clefts, and from wild fields a chill wind ran that tossed the withered grass and our uncovered hair,

I remember how with your warm cloak you took me from the cold. Near to our feet the waters' noisy rhythms clashed, and clouds moved Westward slow to shroud the sinking sun. And there with that heaving sea and blowing sky and hands beneath a cloak folded in one, flowed in my soul the Earth-held tide of peace that moves in clouds and seas and folded hands. A mad song-sparrow in a windy bush

grew still. The sun was gone and Ocean darkened But down the long uneasy years this grace

we can remember only, like a star

that runs across the emptyness of night,

one radiant flash before its light is gone.

Cone

Richard Chase

22