In the Round

air-borne, bore leaves and ballads

of the birds, the clouds and storms

and all the world beside mere flower-

ing of our single breath. Thought

nothing of the skulking, not yet

lowering gloom such opulence must

shed. Nor thought a blow must soon

begin, a wind until now banked

or freely spent among our breath

with our consent-the thing we spun

that sped on air, a dusty sag-

ging spiderweb instead, torn string-

and blowing break its instruments.

IN THE ROUND

Catching yourself, hands lathery

and face ajar, inside the glass,

you wryly smile; watching, you know

you're in for it:

there in the twinkle

of your eye the horny butting goat

and jutting horny bull, the weasel,

goose bedraggled and the wren

with greedy bill go flashing by;

there too, recoiled as from the shadow

of itself in a teetering pool, claws

contracted to one cry, the spider

crouches in its den.

What gusto

this that blows its violence

through a locust's violin, mad summer

burnishing in such midge mouths?

These the routine heroes, poised,

in resolution black as bulls,

deadlocked in a din of warriors

grappling centaurs-prizes near:

a heifer nibbling grass; the rouged

and gossamer girl, nothing diaphanous

as the fearful hope that flits,

a fire's touch, inside her breath,

each prize forgotten-on a vase.

One wonders how the clay withstands

not only time, but what such hands,

great hearts, command from one another,

art and earth, the audience amazed.

Still, though clay crack, necks

break, twitchy as a cock, they stand,

engrossed and going on, a Bach

of a beetle, strutting like a yokel,

nightlong at its tongs and bones.

THE REAPINGS

The firstlings of grief,

pain in all its sweetest fat

and dew, abounding in my sinews

its sinews, like a mettlesome, gay

youth ...

years later,

the fields gone over a thousand