BEYOND THE REACH OF THE SUN

Time ran out so the story goes

for the legended land that lay

beyond the Pillars of Heracles

and that island empire

with its bronzed battlements

fruited gardens and steep

fire-flame mountain

fell (so Plato tells us)

“in one dreadful day

and one dreadful night”

disappearing down and ever down

into ocean buried dark mystery

Dream-drowned the mystery waits

in cold deep sleep

waits for those first faint soundings

that might lift it upward and ever up

to the sun’s light and reality

But what then? As the stones rise

from fathomed deep

one by one to the pitiless glare

of the long-lost sun

will we perhaps wonder

Did we dream the drowned world?

Did we just dream Atlantis?