We're leaving. The great cavelike bird
Sucks up everyone indiscriminately:
We cross Acheron
Via a telescopic concourse.
It taxis, accelerates, gathers power,
Lifts off, and suddenly is raised into the sky
Body and soul: our bodies and souls.
Are we worthy of Assumption?
Now it flies into the purple twilight
Over the ice of nameless seas,
Or above a mantle of dark clouds,
As if this planet of ours
Had hidden its face in shame.
Now it's flying with dull thuds
Almost as if someone were driving piles
Into the Stygian swamp;
Now along soft,
Smoothed tracks of air.
The night is without sleep, but brief,
Brief the way no night has ever been:
Light and carefree like a first night.