The Task

I took the longer path to meet the colt,

assaulted by the anger of his sweat

sweet in the woods, astonished on the snow.

What was it rumored on the morning frost

keener than loss and hot as animal

perplexed my years and roiled my sight with tears.

I took the ponder path to find his breath,

to see it like a pendant on the light

glittering with the diamond of his health.

But when the tracks of sleigh began to run

I sensed the rounds, burned brilliant in the flesh

across his neck, to which he had been pressed.

And sensed the tasks that settle in the barns

wanting an assignation and a life:

shoes to be forged and blinders necessary,

bridles to tighten, burdens to be drawn.

And sensed that nothing simply touched ancther,

not weather, wind, nor water, simple rot.

1 suffered all the things that work to use us

and grieved the very uses in themselves,

as if the hunger gnawing through their forms

required that their food be boy or colt;

as if no lovely purpose touched me pure,

but bid me to be ridden or to ride.

Rather than walk the fable to the end

and meet again the wound that 1 met then,

I take the shorter path that skirts the woods.

But every season the astonished snows

remind my winter what my darkness knows:

I took the sorrow path to meet myself.