Our body is a moulded river
NOVALIS

Out of a bellicose fore-time, thundering
    head-on collisions of cloud and rock in an
    [bad word]  crevasse-and-avalanche, troll country,
    deadly to breathers,

    it whelms into our picture below the melt-line,
    where tarns lie frore under frowning cirques, goat-bell,
    wind-breaker, fishing-rod, miner's-lamp country,
    already at ease with

    the mien and gestures that [bad word] its kindness,
    in streams, still anonymous, still jumpable,
    flows as it should through any declining country
    in probing spirals.

    Soon of a size to be named and the cause of
    dirty in-fighting among rival agencies,
    down a steep stair, penstock-and-turbine country,
    it plunges ram-stam,

    to foam through a wriggling gorge incised in softer
    strata, hemmed between crags that nauntle heaven,
    robber-baron, tow-rope, portage-way country,
    nightmare of merchants.

    Disemboguing from foothills, now in hushed meanders,
    now in riffling braids, it vaunts across a senile
    plain, well-entered, chateau-and-cider-press country,
    its regal progress

    gallanted for a while by quibbling poplars,
    then by chimneys: led off to cool and launder
    retort, steam-hammer, gasometer country,
    it changes color.

    Polluted, bridged by girders, banked by concrete,
    now it bisects a polyglot metropolis,
    ticker-tape, taxi, brothel, foot-lights country,
    à-la-mode always.

    Broadening or burrowing to the moon's phases,
    turbid with pulverised wastemantle, on through
    flatter, duller, hotter, cotton-gin country
    it scours, approaching

    the tidal mark where it puts off majesty,
    disintegrates, and through swamps of a delta,
    punting-pole, fowling-piece, oyster-tongs country,
    wearies to its final

    act of surrender, effacement, atonement
    in a huge amorphous aggregate no cuddled
    attractive child ever dreams of, non-country,
    image of death as

    a spherical dew-drop of life. Unlovely
    monsters, our tales believe, can be translated
    too, even as water, the selfless mother
    of all especials