When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain.

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

[K]now that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.

They import and they consume reality.

Justice and mercy/ Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.