In the Clearing

 Robert Frost   Talk Aloft

 Someone says the Lord
 Says our reaching toward
 Is its own reward.
 One would like to know
 Where God says it though.
 We don't like that much.
 Let's see where we are.
 What's that sulphur blur
 Off there in the fog ?
 Go consult the log.
 It's some kind of town,
 But it's not New York.
 We're not very far
 Out from where we were.
 It's still Kitty Hawk.

 We'd have got as far
 Even at a walk.

 Don't you crash me down.
 Though our kiting ships
 Prove but flying chips
 From the science shop
 And when motors stop
 They may have to drop
 Short of anywhere,
 Though our leap in air
 Prove as vain a hop
 As the hop from grass
 Of a grasshopper,
 Don't discount our powers;
 We have made a pass
 At the infinite,
 Made it, as it were,
 Rationally ours,
 To the most remote
 Swirl of neon-lit
 Particle afloat.
 Ours was to reclaim
 What had long been faced
 As a fact of waste
 And was waste in name.
 That's how we became
 Though an earth so small,
 Justly known to fame

 As the Capital
 Of the universe.
 We make no pretension
 Of projecting ray
 We can call our own
 From this ball of stone,
 None I don't reject
 As too new to mention.
 All we do's reflect
 From our rocks, and yes,
 From our brains no less.
 And the better part
 Is the ray we dart
 From this head and heart,
 The mens animi.

 Till we came to be
 There was not a trace
 Of a thinking race
 Anywhere in space.
 We know of no world
 Being whirled and whirled
 Round and round the rink
 Of a single sun
 (So as not to sink),
 Not a single one
 That has thought to think.

 The Holiness of Wholiness   

 Pilot, though at best your
 Flight is but a gesture,
 And your rise and swoop,
 But a loop the loop,
 Lands on someone hard
 In his own backyard
 From no higher heaven
 Than a bolt of levin,
 I don't say retard.
 Keep on elevating.
 But while meditating
 What we can't or can
 Let's keep starring man
 In the royal role.
 It will not be his
 Ever to create
 One least germ or coal.
 Those two things we can't.
 But the comfort is
 In the covenant
 We may get control
 If not of the whole
 Of at least some part
 Where not too immense,
 So by craft or art
 We can give the part
 Wholeness in a sense.
 The becoming fear
 That becomes us best
 Is lest habit ridden
 In the kitchen midden
 Of our dump of earnig
 And our dump of learning
 We come nowhere near
 Getting thought expressed.

 The Mixture Mechanic

 This wide flight we wave
 At the stars or moon
 Means that we approve
 Of them on the move.
 Ours is to behave
 Like a kitchen spoon
 Of a size Titanic
 To keep all things stirred
 In a blend mechanic
 Saying That's the tune,
 That's the pretty kettle!
 Matter mustn't curd,
 Separate and settle.
 Action is the word.

 Nature's never quite
 Sure she hasn't erred
 In her vague design
 Till on some fine night
 We two come in flight
 Like a king and queen
 And by right divine,
 Waving scepter-baton,
 Undertake to tell her
 What in being stellar
 She's supposed to mean.

 God of the machine,
 Peregrine machine,
 Some still think is Satan,
 Unto you the thanks
 For this token flight,
 Thanks to you and thanks
 To the brothers Wright
 Once considered cranks
 Like Darius Green
 In their home town, Dayton.
 1962 "In the Clearing"