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IN THE MOUNTAIN TENT I amhearing the shape of the rain Take the shape of the tent and believe it, Laying down all around where I lie A profound, unspeakable law. I obey, and am free-falling slowly Through the thought-out leaves of the wood Into the minds of animals. I am there in the shining of water Like dark, like light, out of Heaven. I am there like the dead, or the beast Itself, which thinks of a poemGreen , plausible, living, and holy— And cannot speak, but hears, Called forth from the waiting of things, A vast, proper, reinforced crying With the sifted, harmonious pause, The sustained intake of all breath Before the first word of the Bible. At midnight water dawns Upon the held skulls of the foxes And weasels and tousled hares On the eastern side of the mountain. Their light is the image I make As I wait as if recentlykilled, Receptive, fragile, half-smiling, My brow watermarked with the mark On the wing of a moth And the tent taking shape on my body Like ill-fitting, Heavenly clothes. Drowning With Others 109 From holes in the ground comes my voice In the God-silenced tongue of the beasts. "I shall rise from the dead/' I am saying. 110 ...

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