In my quest to escape
to the rumoured ocean's far roar,
I wander all my days
in the drifts of the deserts,
circling the depths
of these vast dune seas
that burn
under the lidless,
captious stare
of that great flaming eye.

One day therein,
I spied the remains of
a great tawny tower,
that leaned at an oblique angle,
broken and blasted
by the drifting sands,
the four faces of the long
decayed clock, shattered
below and pointing upwards
towards the sky.
I imagined it to be some 
ancient obelisk of progress.

The shell of the ruin
was wind etched stone,
and at its foot,
half-buried in the sand,
lay a great cracked bell,
scorched and bleached.
Within the yawning heart
of that bell, where the dust had gathered,
sheltered from the inextinguishable sun,
a shabby tangle of
crisped, dried grass clung.

I took out my flask,
and weighed my generosity,
before swilling a few drops
into the brown blades.
I'm not sure why…
But I waited, watched…
Maybe I expected
an instant bloom,
like in the old deserts
after the flood.
I wait for a minute
and then, turned back
into the drifting
twist of desolation.

I still wonder now:
did it take?
Was that the drop
that made the difference?
Perhaps now there is a new tree 
rooted within that great bell.
Perhaps the jungle has taken hold
and there are birds nested within.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, English romantic poet, died today in 1822.