The Animals

They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space,
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plan a foot upon,
Were never in any place.

For by words the world was called
Out of the empty air,
With words was shaped and walled--
Line and circle and square,
Mud and emerald,--
Snatched from deceiving death
By the articulate breath.

But these have never trod
Twice the familiar track,
Never never turned back
Into the memoried day;
All is new and near
In the unchanging Here
Of the fifth great day of god,
That shall remain the same,
Never shall pass away.

On the sixth day we came.

-- Edwin Muir [1887-1959]