"The most sublime spectacle on earth"

"Zoroaster's Temple in Clouds" - Grand Canyon

"Entering Temples of Silence"

was first published in

The Chariton Review

at Truman State University

in the Fall 2000 issue. 

Entering Temples of Silence:

Grand Canyon, July 21, 1999

James Hart  

for Ethan Hart

“The prudent keep silent.”  John Muir

This should be the holy canyon

of the silent world, the airy crossroads

where speechless pilgrims pause, edges

of something eternities older than God.

My son who likes to measure his world

in fractions and precise percentages

tells me seven out of ten voices

we hear speak in foreign tongues,

and someday he’ll realize this chasm

opens a fraction of time’s immortality.

Flocks of Asians in dark-winged hair

cluster at overlooks, chatter language

as alien as Anasazi to me as they pose

for ubiquitous Kodak moments where

Zoroaster’s temple mutely pierces time,

mysteriously distant in morning haze,

a rugged backdrop for day’s ragged fray,

tourist herds pushing ultimate views.

Eventually, this international babble

rises, disappears to meaningless air

as ravens drop from rimless cliffs,

the canyon’s black keepers of silence

opening wings on ancient updrafts

to glide peerlessly into granite past

opened before us.  This planet’s wound,

the red flesh of eons, offers a healing

balm, pale temples, muted towers,

forgotten waters whispering vast

tongues of void too great to contain

the echoes of any human language.

"The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth"

(1875) is an essay by John Wesley Powell

from his book The Exploration of the

Colorado River and Its Canyons.