" Dawn and a high film; the sun burned it;
But noon had a thick sheet, and the clouds coming,
The low rain-bringers, trooping in from the north,
From the far cold fog-breeding seas, the womb of storms.
Dusk brought a wind and the sky opened:
All down the west the broken strips lay snared in the light,
Bellied and humped and heaped on the hills.
The set sun threw the blaze up;
The sky lived redly, banner on banner of far-burning flame,
From south to north the furnace door wide and the smoke rolling.
We in the fields, the watchers from the burnt slope,
Facing the west, facing the bright sky, hopelessly longing to know
the red beauty--
But the unable eyes, the too-small intelligence,
The insufficient organs of reception
Not a thousandth part enough to take and retain.
We stared, and no speaking. and felt the deep loneness
of incomprehension.
The flesh must turn cloud, the spirit, air,
Transformation to sky and the burning,
Absolute oneness with the west and the down sun.
But we, being earth-stuck, watched from the fields,
Till the rising rim shut out the light;
Till the sky changed, the long wounds healed;
Till the rain fell. "

― William Everson , The Residual Years: Poems, 1934-1948: Including a Selection of Uncollected and Previously Unpublished Poems