To The Holy Spirit

Immeasurable haze: The desert valley spreads Up golden river-beds As if in other days. Trees rise and thin away, And past the trees, the hills, Pure line and shade of dust, Bear witness to our wills: We see them, for we must; Calm in deceit, they stay. High noon returns the mind Upon its local fact: Dry grass and sand; we find No vision to distract. Low in the summer heat, Naming old graves, are stones Pushed here and there, the seat Of nothing, and the bones Beneath are similar: Relics of lonely men, Brutal and aimless, then, As now, irregular. These are thy fallen sons, Thou whom I try to reach. Thou whom the quick eye shuns, Thou dost elude my speech. But when I go from sense And trace thee down in thought, I meet thee, then, intense And know thee as I ought. But thou art mind alone, And I, alas, am bound Pure mind to flesh and bone And flesh and bone to ground. These had no thought: at most Dark faith and blinding earth. Where is the trammeled ghost? Was there another birth? Only one certainty Beside thine unfleshed eye, Beside the spectral tree, Can I discern: these die. All of this stir of age, Though it elude my sense Into what heritage I know not, seems to fall Quiet beyond recall, Into irrelevance.