Three Parts from “After Nature”

III.

To divide the woods again,its present current drawn,

I expel the oak, any last springs,the charge of fields.

All its unrest takenthe new places fit the soil,

shearing it from to make a new site.The deer. The fatal leaves.

In their exhausted stances some of the pine remainthe hill crest, where a limit of bird are.

Their coarse fletchings shed decay,dropped through branches tepid sap fills,

the fitful ground dark, spent, quiet,vague.

XII.

Once, in the paling grasses, I heard you.The lengths of summer drawn to meet a sated spectre

were fastened, come from the slack of treesraking light in the season left.

The draining heat knotted pollens slanting through.Cedar halves purged, brown in stalks of field

reduced under each plant wane, the hoarded arrangementspursed in my eyes less, bodies summoned to order spent.

It was a scalped wave come upon. Animal huddled into thicket chased.A lungs stalled in the guts of August fraying.

Chorus.

We have watched you a long time hereWhat the severe night repairedInterrupted trees resilient listChattel never survived, never had

The world is just digesting usSuch is witness, our hard laborThe clutch of sight strangles, this is the sure gripWe have no ballast will even

Welcome this amount of thingsAlarmed animals varyEach sight heard traffics moreThe peals soon a vital store, indelible

Abandoned witness in your mouth keepIts censor your second breadth of eyesOther things portion each otherHow quiet the fast grouse, the maurad of trees

XVIII.

Now that the trees are mutestrewn through them our sight peals out a sorted tame.

We cross the wide field.Its thickets scatter what light arms the rest

of its shallow ground.This contracted life pollens the mild organs

spanned in the accurate dusk, lastly digestedthrough the slow yield. Preyed on entire

their bodies answer malformed to ours,a dark concert writ if spoor.

We go on so informed,bowed by the dark to see, nearer, nearer the grasses.