Air moves in a mysterious way
its wonders to perform
invisible, divisible, irresistible
insensate blast, engine of all.
Born in the borderland between sea and sky,
falls on land, and brick by brick by brick
reduces ash to ashes, dust to dusts.
Parent to the form of trees.
Shaking, shaping limbs in rage,
bending the child to your whim.
high on heaths in violence abounding
maddening the maddened, making madder, mad kings,
fooling fools and blinding the blind;
whilst lowly heathers and bilberries lie low
sifting and dividing to nothing your every notion.
We hold your madness near, erect barriers -
stone, wood, glass, metal;
catch cubed power, the better to live
in the footsteps of salt men
who, driven before you on lines between life and death,
end: reduced to leather and bones.
Strangely attracted to chaotic turbulence
you (eddy to your friends) whistle up your fluid familiar,
ring-leader in wanton ruin,
gang-leader on the coastal chain,
breaking rock
stones
pebbles
gravel
sand
silt
mud
slime
Everything.
