Animals and Nature

Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.

A stone is a better pillow than many visions.

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, The green casque has outdone your elegance.

Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. 1

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze.

Forgive us all our trespasses, Little creatures, everywhere!

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

Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

The President ordains the bee to be Immortal.

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.

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