On the surface of a giant rock
Hurtling through space
There crawl the tiny parasites
They call the human race.
From the dawn of man
To modern times
No peoples are complete
Without including in their culture
The rocks beneath their feet.
Caught in them the history
Of what happened on the planet,
Sifted through the sediments
Growing in the granite
Pushing with the pegmatites,
Spewed across the lava,
The rocky truth of all that was
For all those coming after.
From dry Australia’s ancient seas
That flow in opalescence,
To tektites, meteor blasted
And stone dinosaurs, still present.
The story of the rock itself
And all that happened to it
Is laid and pressed and scorched and writ
Like lettered rock, right through it.
We used the flint to make a knife
The blocks, a henge, or room
Lapis for a Pharaoh’s mask,
Pebbles to weight a loom,
A fossil print to feed our thought
A diamond for our love;
Rocks and rockmen, men and rocks
The two are hand in glove.
The more we learn, the more we find
We yet have to unlock.
As the magma swells,
We ask ourselves:
If people are the midnight fools
Upon the earth’s great clock,
Are the rocks there for the people
Or the people for the rock?
