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.
This poem is in the public domain.