Through stone-cliff palisades and fortress walls
Festooned with spider steel from ridge to ridge,
The cobwebs of the falcon-guarded bridge.
The fates that spun it harbor in the sky.
A thirst that would have drunk the river dry
Distills thin streams of water to the earth
Down cold steel cables of an elbow’s girth.
It licks them till they gleam with mother’s pride.
It nestles with sweet ardor in her side.
The earth split open with a thundering sound
And silver clouds rained garlands to the ground.
Nourished with cliff rock and the river flood
It towers in the strength of dragon blood.
Its teeth are swept with coiling winds that twist
Daggers of moisture from the dragon mist.
It spits a lake of silver at its feet
In which its beauty and its daring meet.
It does a swan dive off itself and plunges
Onto the precipice from which it lunges.
