The canyon wind blows high and low,
Her voice calls fresh and deep.
From mesa, bluff and blue plateau
Her pine-brushed currents sweep,
Down turquoise ledge and valley
And thousand-terraced height
Past opal drop and alley
And fawn-veiled stairs of light.
Of sheep-land, and of cattle-land
She whispers still and swift.
Her flight has fanned the painted sand
Green spur and lilac drift,
Leapt river-bed and rapid-head
Down tawny crags and buff,
Paced caverned gulches dark and red
And hundred-portaled bluff.
Her touch stirred pine and piñon ways
Before the foot of man.
In Navajo dominion days
Through peopled cliffs she ran.
As soon as star and shadow sped,
Be fore the first green tree,
Before the Colorado fled,
Her soul turned towards the sea.
Oh, manifold and manifold
The canyon drops away:
And far the desert shimmers old
As night, and young as day:
And wide and free your music plays,
So dumb, so fully heard,
Like ocean tides and human ways
That speak without a word.
What are you many-chording wind
And what is it you say,
As light as life, as light as death,
Across the vibrant day?
So high you blow, so low you blow—
And yet so close and deep,
I hardly know from my own breath
The hushing air you keep.
I hardly know from my own breath
Your breath of sage and pine.
My fault, my force, my dream, my death
Throb in your life divine—
Divine as desert dust, the rock
In sapphire depths below
The vanished cliffman and the flock
Far on the blue plateau.
