In the Desert

This brief and haunting poem captures a moment of primitive worship in a barren landscape. Crane presents a naked, bestial figure kneeling upon the desert, its hands lifted in supplication to snakelike shadows and ray-shot light. The creature's blue eyes - a striking detail that suggests something almost human, almost innocent, caught in an act of faith both absurd and deeply moving. What do we worship when there is nothing but wasteland around us? The shadows, the illusions, the darkness itself? Crane's spare, imagistic style creates a vision that is part biblical, part primordial, entirely modern in its existential hunger. This is a poem about the human need to genuflect before something, anything, even in a world that offers no clear object of devotion. The creature may be bestial, but it is also pitiful in its longing - and perhaps that longing is the most human thing of all.