Nasal intonations of light
and clicking tongues ...
publicity of windows
stoning me with pent-up cries ...
smells of abattoirs ...
smells of long-dead meat.
Some day-end--
while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket
off the warm body of a squaw,
and the jaguars are out to kill ...
with a blue-black night coming on
and a painted cloud
stalking the first star--
I shall go alone into the Silence ...
the coiled Silence ...
where a cry can run only a little way
and waver and dwindle
and be lost.
And there ...
where tiny antlers clinch and strain
as life grapples in a million avid points,
and threshing things,
strike and die,
letting their hate live on
in the spreading purple of a wound ...
I too
will make covert of a crevice in the night,
and turn and watch ...
nose at the cleft's edge.
