An Old Story

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind.

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful

Dream. The worst in us having taken over

And broken the rest utterly down.

                                                               A long age

Passed. When at last we knew how little

Would survive us—how little we had mended

Or built that was not now lost—something

Large and old awoke. And then our singing

Brought on a different manner of weather.

Then animals long believed gone crept down

From trees. We took new stock of one another.

We wept to be reminded of such color.