This Animal

It must have been a shy thing walking here:

The secret stepping herd, warm-flanked together,

Could not impress this shifting floor with tracks

Enough to long outlast our meager weather.

It bore a high and fragile head, too light

To leave the branches long like antlers bent,

But where it walked it planted cloven hearts

Pointing the ever upward way it went.

These leather feet of a later, louder hour,

Though blundering until darkness takes the trace,

Will never stand above bound, patrician hooves,

The glazing, compassionate eyes or the stiffening grace.

We are betrayed by the kindred flesh we ate

And the animal skins, yet bloody, that we wore,

And the sound of twigs like unsuspecting bones

Cracked out for bread behind the forest door.

Go down then where the iron-sheltered fear

Nudges the dark and ever windless hollow,

Remembering on what green, inviolate hill

We learned the bitter wisdom not to follow.

Charlie Masters