John Coolidge Adams - Ocean Chorus
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Is not the ocean itself their past?
Landscape of night for Him
Who is called All-Seeing, untouched
By storms, deep-silted with the motes
Of carrion which stand for light
God rests in nothing. The perfect shapes
Delicately blazing monstrous creatures
Cross obliquely eating lice and moss
Here is a semblance of the first man;
Sinewy, translucent, thick with life
Superficially violent, inwardly calm
His pulse beats in his ears. He is secretive;
Entrenched in his side, the sacred parasites
This is the night of his wedding
His extremities reek of his wife
Flesh of his flesh, a rib of sand
Who is listening, not to his voice
But to the voice of spirits, and waiting
For the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
To climb down from the trees
Landscape of night for Him
Who is called All-Seeing, untouched
By storms, deep-silted with the motes
Of carrion which stand for light
God rests in nothing. The perfect shapes
Delicately blazing monstrous creatures
Cross obliquely eating lice and moss
Here is a semblance of the first man;
Sinewy, translucent, thick with life
Superficially violent, inwardly calm
His pulse beats in his ears. He is secretive;
Entrenched in his side, the sacred parasites
This is the night of his wedding
His extremities reek of his wife
Flesh of his flesh, a rib of sand
Who is listening, not to his voice
But to the voice of spirits, and waiting
For the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
To climb down from the trees
