Nature and Elements

Forgive us all our trespasses, Little creatures, everywhere!

I hear a sudden cry of pain! There is a rabbit in a snare.

O Milky Way, sister in whiteness To Canaan’s rivers and the bright Bodies of lovers drowned, Can we follow toilsomely Your path to other nebulae? 6

Under Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine. 3

Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

The President ordains the bee to be Immortal.

And still the grossest iridescence of ocean Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls.

He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own… The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.

Is the lion that comes down to drink.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

Damned universal cock, as if the sun Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Green crammers of the green fruits of the world.

The natives of the rain are rainy men.

The book of moonlight is not written yet.

And as he came he saw that it was spring, A time abhorrent to the nihilist Or searcher for the fecund minimum.

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.

Pigeons on the grass alas.

The old dog barks backward without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March.