not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s n
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now—whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can

There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothi

Understand, I am always trying to
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape
and so, last week,

All winter the water
has crashed over
the cold the cold sand. Now
it breaks over the thin
branch of your body.

Last night
in the fields
I lay down in the darkness
to think about death,
but instead I fell asleep,

Not quite four a.m., when the rapt
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books ar
in their neat and colorful rows. H

Did you too see it, drifting, all
Did you see it in the morning, ris
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and li
into the bondage of its wings; a s

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, lik
the wings of a moth in the beak of
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.

Don’t call this world adorable, or
It’s frisky, and a theater for mor
The eyelash of lightning is neithe
The struck tree burns like a pilla
But the blue rain sinks, straight

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.
The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.
She leans her long neck and tongue