Lost to View

A range of clouds banked up behind the peak Of that apocryphal Blue mountain, with a wide, oblique Burst of late sun Projecting at the east’s receding wall A film of what the day so far has done: A wind that tries to scrape The breaking waves up as they run Across the bay And shatter at the foot of Fluted Cape In tern and gannet-printed veils of spray; And trees the wind has caught, Which seem too self-contained to sway When they are blown, And only move as a pleasing afterthought. No one. No human presence has been known, Surely, to venture here. It takes one blackbird to disown That vagary And, whistling just a few feet from his ear, To call him back again and make him be The subject in this scene, The one who is required to see. Another day, No blackbird with its song will intervene. The spray will hang its veils and the trees sway.