Gila Bend
Where aerial gunnery was, you think at first a cadaver
On foot might get through
Forty years after. Shorts of space pelter back
Off the dead bullets; walking, you should brand, brand
The ground but you don't: you leave
Not a thing moving on a sand mountain
Smashed flat by something that didn't know
What else to do.
This silver small-stone heat
No man can cross; no man could get
To his feet, even to rise face-out
Full-force from the grave, where the sun is down on him
Alone, harder than resurrection
Is up: down harder
harder
Much harder than that.
—James Dickey
—found in The Eagle’s Mile