The Eye

by Robinson Jeffers

The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific--
Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, clash of faiths--
Is a speck of dust on the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland
          plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke
Into pale sea--look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet:
         this dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antartica: those are the eyelids that never close;
         this is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.

Posted by Vanderleun at January 25, 2006 12:54 AM