Shore Leave Lorry
Roy Fuller
The gigantic mass, the hard material,
That entering our atmosphere is all
Consumed in an instant in a golden tail,
Is not more alien, nor the moon more pale:
The darkness, countries wide, where muscled beasts
Cannot link fold on fold of mountains, least
Mysterious: the stars are not so still.
Compared with what? In low gear up the hill
The lorry takes its load of strange wan faces,
Which gaze where the loping lion has his bases,
Like busts. Over half the sky a meteor falls;
The gears grind; somewhere a suffering creature calls.
