Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/865

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JOHN DOS PASSOS
743

also dreamed of paths across the seas
and said: It is God who walks upon the waters.

Is it not he who put God above war,
beyond fate,
beyond the earth,
beyond the sea and death?

Did he not give the greenest bough
of the dark-green Iberian oak
for God's holy bonfire,
and for love flame one with God?

But to-day . . . What does a day matter?
for the new household gods
there are plains in forest shade
and green boughs in the old oak-woods.

Though long the land waits
for the curved plough to open the first furrow,
there is sowing for God's grain
under thistles and burdocks and nettles.

What does a day matter? Yesterday waits
for to-morrow, to-morrow for infinity;
men of Spain, neither is the past dead,
nor is to-morrow, nor yesterday, written.

Who has seen the face of the Iberian God?
I wait
for the Iberian man who with strong hands
will carve out of Castilian oak
The parched God of the grey land.

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