Sitting in his hut, the oxherd looks out at a world that's strange but eerily familiar. He sees light and dark reversed, creation lit like snow against a nighttime sky. East is West out there, left is right, first is last. Buds blossom at night, on branches white and luminous. The oxherd wonders: Who could have done this? Who could have brought this world into being?
The oxherd doesn't know because he lost himself in its creation. He disappeared. Now, says the poet, "he watches the growth of things, while himself abiding in immoveable serenity." He is so still, so empty, that he seems not to exist, even to himself. The only thing he knows is what's before him.
It could indeed be a foreign land, with its nighttime blossoms and its strange new story of ideas coming up, not down--a mirror image of what the oxherd learned. A thousand things have found new places. Soon the oxherd will have to leave his hut and find his footing there, find his way around. He's in the place the ox foresaw but lacked the words to speak of.
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