The Animals
They do not live in the world,
And not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.
For with names the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With names was built and walled,
Line and circle and square,
Dust and emerald;
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.
But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memorized day.
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifith great day of God,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.
On the sixth day we came.
______________________
Edwin Muir
One Foot In Eden
Grove 1958
