Robinson Jeffers
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November Surf
Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are
drawn
Like smoking mountains bright from the west
And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then
suddenly
The old granite forgets half a year's filth:
The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots
Of dung in corners of the rock, and used
Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings
of the summer
Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy:
I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all
seasons
The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep,
Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long
coast
Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines:
The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more
numerous,
The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed
Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains
The dignity of room, the value of rareness.
_____drawn
Like smoking mountains bright from the west
And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then
suddenly
The old granite forgets half a year's filth:
The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots
Of dung in corners of the rock, and used
Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings
of the summer
Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy:
I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all
seasons
The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep,
Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long
coast
Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines:
The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more
numerous,
The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed
Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains
The dignity of room, the value of rareness.
Img abov:Robinson Jeffers at Tor House in Carmel circa 1958. Robinson was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement. Jeffers died in in Carmel on January 20, 1962. (Monterey County Herald archive)
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