PARADOX HILL: "FROM APPALACHIA TO LUNAR SHORE, REVISED EDITION"

FIRESEED

74 FIRESEED Primordial space, Primordial dark— One atom spinning in its arc, The worldseed lonely as a spark— Spinning and growing till it grew Great in the silence; then it blew; Out of the oneness, there were two— Two in the vastness burned and whirled; Four in the void forth were hurled: Eight in the thunder—so a world— Thousands to millions; billions flame— Out of the oneness, trillions came; Out of the sameness, none the same. Trillions to trillions split and glowed; All in accordance, out they rode; Circle in circle burned and flowed . . . Earth in its orbit cooled and spun One first circle with time begun, So forever to ring the Sun. Fire winds passing spilt down a cell; Ancient of oceans rose and fell Washing branches of coral shell. There in the swamplands fern seed blew— Xylem and cortex slowly grew, Giant rushes and strange bamboo. 75 Eons passing—the great trees died, Fell and rotted; the serpents plied Over that jungle undefied. Ancient of oceans ebbed, returned— Into the jungle sunlight burned, Black, in its measures, coal was turned. Ferned in its blackness, branched and veined Trapping the sunlight, so contained Fire forever with darkness skeined. Gold, gold, and golden— Golden monstrous snakes Turning to oil, and winding through the earth, Amber and iridescent through the caves, Black, green, and tawny serpentines of oil Enfolding waves of sunlight in their coil— Gold, gold, and golden— Trapped to flame again, Wild on the steeps of derricks in the sky. Another time—the years and days In circles moving, and the rays Of great wheels moving down the ways Of sunlight; oxen in their yokes, The great hubs turning and the spokes— The oxen like a fire that stokes The shining grasses of the plains; The horse a fire that burns the grains 76 Of golden oat seed as he strains To pull the plow. The Diesel turns The oil of serpents as it churns, So cycle into cycle burns— Gold, gold, and golden—golden cyclotrons Throb in the leadshields, while around the Earth The kilowatts and ergs and quanta move Intricate webs of fiber from the sun Pulsing the engines. From the wilds of space The satellite relays the colored forms That burn and posture on our TV screens; And down the dusty craters of the moon Men stumble drunken, picking up the rocks. Singing and seething from the core of wonder, Consuming, unconsumed, I pass undying through these globes of tinder Candescent and illumed. Gold, gold, gold, and gold— Nothing is ever still and cold; God is the fire made manifold— Flames in the wind and flowers in the quasar— The quasars outward roar Expanding worlds, and from my falling gratefire Primordial sunsets pour— From one form to another I am passing— 77 I change but do not go— Foxfire and firefly and pitchblende seethe within me— Volcanoes through me flow— The snakes of golden oil burn in my body, My flesh is veined and branching with the fire, From form to form I pass, forever burning Along this arc, and filamented wire Magnetic holds me to the sun’s turning. From path to path I, too, can pull the sun— The seedfire is of life, and we are burning, burning Within the burning ONE. ...