Twenty-four thousand times in any year, lightning strikes
and kills. On the Heath, the timber shells, like bony Flemish spires,
point heavenwards in warning. The stags take note and bow their heads
at the sky’ s first challenge, or hurl a bellowing peal back in defiance.
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
of agave bristle in primordial defense,
like a cornered monster backed up against the sea.
A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence
faster than an afterthought. Dust rises easily.
The poor have the best views,
Views sloping down to sea.
A green and yellow planet,
A blue band, rung with stars.
The poor have the best views.
You have to walk to get there.
Up three flights, narrow paths,
Houses rising steeply side to side.
No, no space for a car.
When the flag lifts, you see the coast:
Yellow curve of sand,
Framed by reaching branches.
Little humpbacked islands,
Soon they will drill for oil there,
Deep underwater. Once microscopic
Diatoms swarmed in salt, danced, died.
O, she says (because she loves to say O),
O to this cloud-break that ravels the night,
O to this moon, its mouthful of sorrow,
O shallow grass and the nettle burr’ s bite,
O to heart’ s flare, its wobbly satellite,
O step after step in stumbling tempo,
O owl in oak, O rout of black bat flight,
(O moaned in Attic and Esperanto)
O covetous tongue, O fat fandango,
O gnat tango in the hot, ochered light,
O wind whirred leaves in subtle inferno,
O flexing of sea, O stars bolted tight,
instead of entrance
Goodbye means Avoir
Sved’ s dream said from nowhere
of aliquant angles
some spindle of the sun
empirically facted
deafening skin
open and afterwards
a cough is a couch
idled into
without rain
an island
easily a third worse
Indigo with a flame-red tongue
Greenland’ s icy mountains are fascinating and grand,
And wondrously created by the Almighty’ s command;
And the works of the Almighty there’ s few can understand:
Who knows but it might be a part of Fairyland?
Because there are churches of ice, and houses glittering like glass,
And for scenic grandeur there’ s nothing can it surpass,
Besides there’ s monuments and spires, also ruins,
Which serve for a safe retreat from the wild bruins.
A fall over rock,
Metal answering to water,
Is the seal of this spot;
A land trodden by music
And the tune forgot.
Of a region savage,
The territory that was broken,
Silver gushed free;
And earth holy, earth meek shall receive it
In humility.
This is my mitote,
batoco,
areito,
my bareitote.
This is my bareitote,
areito, batoco,
my a-ba-mitote.
Corre, corrido, navideño.
I walk’ d the other day, to spend my hour,
Into a field,
Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
A gallant flow’ r;
But winter now had ruffled all the bow’ r
And curious store
I knew there heretofore.
Argument
