Archibald MacLeish

Here you will find the Poem The Rock In The Sea of poet Archibald MacLeish

The Rock In The Sea

Think of our blindness where the water burned! 
Are we so certain that those wings, returned 
And turning, we had half discerned 
Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen 
The bird aloft there, did not mean?? 
Our hearts so seized upon the sign! 


Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine 
Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave 
Thundering in the water cave? 
Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff 
And climbed the coral of that iron cliff 
And found what only in our hearts we?d heard? 
The silver screaming of that one, white bird: 
The fabulous wings, the crimson beak 
That opened, red as blood, to shriek 
And clamor in that world of stone, 
No voice to answer but its own. 


What certainty, hidden in our hearts before, 
Found in the bird its metaphor?