Nasal intonations of light
and clicking tongues..
publicity of windows
stoning me with pent-up cries..
smells of abattoirs..
smells of long-dead meat. Some day-end--
while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket
off the warm body of a squaw,
and the jaguars are out to kill..
with a blue-black night coming on
and a painted cloud
stalking the first star--
I shall go alone into the Silence..
the coiled Silence..
where a cry can run only a little way
and waver and dwindle
and be lost. And there..
where tiny antlers clinch and strain
as life grapples in a million avid points,
and threshing things,
strike and die,
letting their hate live on
in the spreading purple of a wound..
I too
will make covert of a crevice in the night,
and turn and watch..
nose at the cleft's edge.