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Lyell’s Hypothesis Again

By Kenneth Rexroth 1905–1982 Kenneth Rexroth

An Attempt to Explain the Former
Changes of the Earth's Surface by
Causes Now in Operation

subtitle of Lyell: Principles of Geology

The mountain road ends here,

Broken away in the chasm where

The bridge washed out years ago.

The first scarlet larkspur glitters

In the first patch of April

Morning sunlight. The engorged creek

Roars and rustles like a military

Ball. Here by the waterfall,

Insuperable life, flushed

With the equinox, sentient

And sentimental, falls away

To the sea and death. The tissue

Of sympathy and agony

That binds the flesh in its Nessus' shirt;

The clotted cobweb of unself

And self; sheds itself and flecks

The sun's bed with darts of blossom

Like flagellant blood above

The water bursting in the vibrant

Air. This ego, bound by personal

Tragedy and the vast

Impersonal vindictiveness

Of the ruined and ruining world,

Pauses in this immortality,

As passionate, as apathetic,

As the lava flow that burned here once;

And stopped here; and said, 'This far

And no further.' And spoke thereafter

In the simple diction of stone.

Naked in the warm April air,

We lie under the redwoods,

In the sunny lee of a cliff.

As you kneel above me I see

Tiny red marks on your flanks

Like bites, where the redwood cones

Have pressed into your flesh.

You can find just the same marks

In the lignite in the cliff

Over our heads. Sequoia

Langsdorfii before the ice,

And sempervirens afterwards,

There is little difference,

Except for all those years.

Here in the sweet, moribund

Fetor of spring flowers, washed,

Flotsam and jetsam together,

Cool and naked together,

Under this tree for a moment,

We have escaped the bitterness

Of love, and love lost, and love

Betrayed. And what might have been,

And what might be, fall equally

Away with what is, and leave

Only these ideograms

Printed on the immortal

Hydrocarbons of flesh and stone.

Kenneth Rexroth, “Lyell’s Hypothesis Again” from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1966 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: The Collected Shorter Poems (1966)

Biography

Kenneth Rexroth was born in South Bend, Indiana and frequently moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He led a tumultuous life that included being orphaned at 14, constant traveling both in the US and abroad, intense political activism, and four marriages. Largely self-educated, he is one of the most well-read poets of the twentieth century. His poems, which influenced Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence . . .

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