The guts that strange augury used, to guess
Which way stealthy rains turn in September,
Were more easy to read and remember
Than cross words borne by the times, not less.

We are walking, sinking with the crow’s feet
Into the land. But while our bodies die,
Our eyes - the steep, stark glass before the soul -
Are opening beyond the stiff-wound sheet.
The dirt, the dung, the stones all question why
We have not brought with us our begging bowl.

The bottom of the hill is in my head
And turns, but not for ploughshares or the dead.

I trade mountains of mean mortality,
That billow hoops round my supple stories
For a lepton’s weight of silent glories;
The healing suns wring from calamity.

In the silence of woods, where the wind sings
We can go to loot life from the dead trees
And face down the stars to the mountains knees;
Cut limbs to see what their hidden blood brings.

We will root out the secrets from the sand,
Tear out the troubled fathoms from the sea,
Catch the running visions from the plain air,
Wrap the brown, reedy shallows in a hand,
Capturing the world in a single tree
And burning canyons with a single stare.

The body, till it learn to roll its range,
Despises exile now, until it change.