The Place for No Story
The coast hills at Sovranes Creek;
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Over rock shaped like flame;
The old ocean at the land’s foot, the vast
Gray extension beyond the long white violence;
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks:
This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen. No imaginable
Human presence here could do anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion.
Copyright Credit: Robinson Jeffers, "The Place for No Story" from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Copyright © 1932 and renewed 1960 by Robinson Jeffers. Used by Permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford University Press, 1988)