| OCR Text |
Show Zion Rim Into the hushed rustle of red dust, A buzzing,-a noise in slow zigzags Above the saltgrass and saxifrage Until it alights like a winged shard Of spring, a slick greenbottle fly whose green To this red desert brings the lazy drowse Of pastoral afternoons. And O! the willows Thicket in the sand with the loose-limbed bravura Of riverbank groves, their waxy switches Spritzed with dust-vermillion. The God of ancient plagues, Of blowflies swarming from the Nile to crust The eyes and mouths of the cursed, God of wandering in the waste Forty famine years, until the cows are hide-bare and ribby And the heart is trudged past bitterness to humble, Must be appalled at this benign inheritance, Affront to the idea of desert. He of all should know How perfection keeps itself aloof, disdains That poor unlucky who would love it. How desolate an exile beauty makes. |
