Nature and Elements

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

These palms are greater than Versailles, for no man made them.

The rat is in the trap, it is in the trap, And attacking heaven and earth with a mouthful of screeches like torn tin.

Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes, Continual wars and wives are what Have tattered his ears and battered his head.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly— I kill where I please because it is all mine.

… with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.

i speak for none of you now, all you plotters of perfect crimes, nor for me, nor for anyone. i speak for those who can’t speak, for the deaf and dumb witnesses, for otters and seals, for the ancient owls of the earth.

The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow. That’s where Orpheus made his mistake.

You and I Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are: That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain.

You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. On the left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny.

The pebble is a perfect creature equal to itself mindful of its limits filled exactly with a pebbly meaning

The time cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new-made clouds and happy as the heart was long, I ran my heedless ways.

In the sun that is young once only, Golden in the mercy of his means.

a crystal willow, a poplar of water, a tall fountain the wind arches over, a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still, a course of a river that turns, moves on, doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving:

a crystal willow, a poplar of water, a tall fountain the wind arches over, a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still, a course of a river that turns, moves on, doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving:

a crystal willow, a poplar of water, a tall fountain the wind arches over, a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still, a course of a river that turns, moves on, doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving:

I am the magical mouse I don’t eat cheese I eat sunsets And the tops of trees.

I’d have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.

His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied, looking for something, something, something. Poor bird, he is obsessed! The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray, mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.