Humming-Bird (Birds) by D.H. Lawrence — Read

I can imagine, in some otherworld / Primeval-dumb, far back / In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed, / Humming-birds raced down the avenues.

Before anything had a soul, / While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate, / This little bit chipped off in brilliance / And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.

I believe there were no flowers, then / In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation. / I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.

Probably he was big / As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big. / Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.

We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time, / Luckily for us. / _Española._