Requiem for Pan

TWO POEMS

REQUIEM FOR PAN

He looked out through my teeth,

he looked out through my eyes.

I felt him in my finger-tips,

I knew him in the fire.

But the Lord rose on Sunday;

we turned the fire down.

I went to the circus

and saw him in a clown,

In the haunches of a stallion

I saw him start and quiver.

He was hanging from the keels of boats

that skimmed the silken river.

He whinnied in the nightwind,

waiting for my wife.

He died like Caesar when my neighbors

stabbed him with a knife.