To Engineers by Roberta Teale Swartz

To Engineers

(To Joun Livincston Lowes)

by Roberta Teale Swartz

I taste of tunnel benefits

And ride in darkened trains

Among the mountains’ canceled roots

To reach the nether plains.

I know the surety of a bridge

Flung over a sharp height:

Ravines have been erased, that I

May cross them in the night.

But so have words made ways for me

Where no way was before;

Cut landings in the rock, and dried

The swamps to a firm floor.

In trepidation with the hills

Suddenly I have known

From crazy cliff to precipice

Suspension bridges thrown —

Then over sentences I passed

Safe into promised land.

I bless their ingenuity

Who make me understand;

Who rule across the wastes of thought

A narrow, certain lane,

And open their blue clearings

In the jungle of the brain.