The unheard, omnivorous

jaws of this rain forest

not merely devour all,

but allow nothing vain;

they never rest,

grinding their disavowal

of human pain.

 

Long, long before us,

those hot jaws like an oven 

steaming, were open

to genocide; they devoured

two minor yellow races, and 

half of a black;

in the word made flesh of God

all entered taht gross, un-

discriminating stomach;

 

the forest is unconverted,

because that shell-like noise

which roars like silence, or

ocean's surpliced choirs

 

entering its nave, to a censer

of swung mist, is not

the rustling of prayer

but nothing; milling air,

a faith, infested cannibal,

which eats gods, which devoured

the god-refusing Carib, petal

by golden petal, then forgot,

and the Arawak

who leaves not the lightest fern-trace

of his fossil to be cultured

by black rock,

 

but only the rusting cries

of a rainbird, like a hoarse

warrior summoning his race

from vaporous air

between this mountain ridge

and the vague sea

where the lost exodus

of corials sunk without trace--

 

there is too much nothing here.