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 hummingbird 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 telescope of time,

Luckily for us