PROLOGUE
Animals tame and animals feral
prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral:
the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile,
rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile.
Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride — every peril
was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural,
while Courage, Devotion, Thrift — every bright laurel
crowned a creature in some mythological mural.
Send forth the high falcon flying after the mind
Till it come toppling down from its cold cloud:
The beak of the falcon to pierce it till it fall
Where the simple heart is bowed.
O in wild innocence it rides
The rare ungovernable element,
But once it sways to terror and descent,
The marches of the wind are its abyss,
No wind staying it upward of the breast —
Let mind be proud for this,
And ignorant from what fabulous cause it dropt,
Out of the water call
my luminous breath,
into the bird, intending serpent, red,
who shakes himself, white,
out of that forest body, black.
Red gourd head spirit of the bush,
your breath is speech;
your speech is ordinary, pure.
I take you from the blue
glass of my sacred windows,
I ring you cold upon my father’ s weights.
Little Robin Redbreast
Sat upon a tree;
Up went Pussy-cat,
Down went he.
Down came Pussy-cat,
And away Robin ran;
Says little Robin Redbreast
“Catch me if you can.”
Little Robin Redbreast
Hopped upon a wall;
Pussy-cat jumped after him,
And almost got a fall.
I
1
Pearl, the precious prize of a king,
Chastely set in cherished gold,
In all the East none equalling,
No peer to her could I behold.
So round, so rare, a radiant thing,
So smooth she was, so small of mold,
Wherever I judged gems glimmering
I set her apart, her price untold.
Alas, I lost her in earth’ s green fold;
Through grass to the ground, I searched in vain.
I languish alone; my heart grows cold
For my precious pearl without a stain.
2
There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.
He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
He snapped at me.
He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But... he didn't catch me!
Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall,
One named Peter, one named Paul.
Fly away, Peter! Fly away, Paul!
Come back, Peter! Come back, Paul!
The cave looked much like any other
from a little distance but
as we approached, came almost
to its mouth, we saw its walls within
that slanted up into a dome
were beating like a wild black lung —
it was plastered and hung with
the pulsing bodies of bats, the organ
music of the body’ s deep
interior, alive, the sacred cave
with its ten thousand gleaming eyes
By the stream, where the ground is soft
and gives, under the slightest pressure — even
the fly would leave its footprint here
and the paw of the shrew the crescent
of its claws like the strokes of a chisel
in clay; where the lightest chill, lighter
than the least rumor of winter, sets the reeds
to a kind of speaking, and a single drop of rain
The mower flipped it belly up,
a baby garter less than a foot long,
dull green with a single sharp
stripe of pale manila down its back,
same color as the underside
which was cut in two places,
a loop of intestine poking out.
It wouldn't live,
so I ran the blades over it again,
and cut it again but didn’ t kill it,
and again and then again,
a cloud of two-cycle fuel smoke
on me like a swarm of bees.
It took so long
my mind had time to spiral
back to the graveyard
