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22 And burning to yield flowers instead of grain, Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.

He moved it roughly with an iron bar, He loaded an old stone-boat with the star And not, as you might think, a flying car,

Such as even poets would admit perforce More practical than Pegasus the horse If it could put a star back in its course.

He dragged it through the ploughed ground at a pace But faintly reminiscent of the race Of jostling rock in interstellar space.

It went for building stone, and I, as though Commanded in a dream, forever go To right the wrong that this should have been so.

Yet ask where else it could have gone as well, I do not know—I cannot stop to tell: He might have left it lying where it fell.

From following walls I never lift my eye Except at night to places in the sky Where showers of charted meteors let fly.

Some may know what they seek in school and church, And why they seek it there; for what I search I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;

Sure that though not a star of death and birth, So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth,