John Gould Fletcher

From “Arizona Poems”

THE CANYON is heaped with stones and undergrowth.

The heat that falls from the sky

Beats at the walls, slides and reverberates

Down in a wave of gray dust and white fire,

Choking the breath and eyes.

The ponies straggle and scramble

Half way up, along the canyon wall.

Their listless riders seldom lift

A weary hand to guide their feet.

Stones are loosened and clatter

Down to the sun-baked depths.

Nothing ever has lived here;

Nothing could ever live here:

Two hawks, screaming and wheeling,

Rouse a few eyes to look aloft.

Boldly poised in a shelf of the stone,

Tiny walls look down at us,

Towers with little square windows.

When we plod up to them,

And dismounting fasten our horses,

Suddenly a blue-gray flock of doves

Bursts in a flutter of wings from the shadows.

Shards of pots and shreds of straw,

Empty brush-roofed rooms in darkness:

And the sound of water tinkling—

A clock that ticks the centuries off in silence.