There had been azure mountains lazing in their distance.
Now in a rush they've slipped their delicate profiles,
vanished, like boys enlisting in a passing army.
The scraggly woods have joined as well.
Only the blond hill is sharp and motionless.
For days our sharp horizon has been hoarding them,
these blue grandees returning in their kept rage,
moving now with such intent and thoroughness,
dragging up the south like a baggage train.
Only the blond hill is sharp and motionless.
The farms and townships that we knew were out there once
no longer live within our power. They're overrun,
have yielded their futures to this vaster thing
which will undo them, or remake them
into moments glimpsed through the swimming windscreen.
And yet the blond hill is sharp and motionless.
The south appals, a Mongol or a Zulu tumult,
the Inchoate, the Blue Engulfer pulling up once more
the fond convulsing images. We watch it calmly,
Magnetised, the privilege of awe restored.
There-the first lightning, spontaneous skeleton,
and look, the blond hill, how sharp, how motionless.