Cave Painting
Look there are dark hands in the black rock,
Man's hands, woman's hands, child's hands hiding in a cave,
Shadows of hands, but with such a living look
They seem to waver and beckon, they seem to move
In a language of gesture startling and piercing as speech.
Up from the green water here we clambered
Say the hands and the bodies of the hands, to hold and to touch,
And here we camped, and here we shall be remembered.
And they are so close and yet so far and wild
They seem to breathe and speak for all humanity
Who made their camp so, man and woman and child,
And flowed with the green river down to infinity;
And beautifully and terribly they wave
In the black rock, like hands alive in a grave.