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And then, ripping the path clean out ofthe woods, Landslid down fifty feet, Snapping high-grade leather, past any help in the world As the horse turned over her, in a long changed shape Loomed once, crossed the sun and the upper trees Like a myth with a hold on her feet, and fell on her With all his intended mass. Know, love, that we Shall rise from here Where she did not, lying now where we have come Beneath the scrambling animal weight Oflust, but that we may sense also What it involves to change in one half-breath From a thing half-beast-that huge-striding joy Between the thighsTo the wholly human in time To die, here at this height Near the vague body-print ofa being that struggled Up, all animal, leaving the human clothes In their sodden bundle, and wandered the lane ofwater Upstream and home, His bridle dragging, his saddle Maniacally wrenched, stopping often to drink Entirely, his eyes receiving bright pebbles, His head in his own image where it flowed. A Letter Looking out ofthe dark ofthe town At midnight, looking down Into water under the lighthouse: Abstractedly, timelessly looking For something beneath the jetty, Waiting for the dazed, silent flash, Like the painless explosion that kills one, To come from above and slide over And empty the surface for milesThe useless, imperial sweep Falling, .May Day Sermon, and Other Poems / 268 Ofutter light-you see A thicket oflittle fish Below the squared stone ofyour window, Catching, as it passes, The blue afterthought ofthe blaze. Shone almost into full being, Inlaid in frail gold in their floor, Their collected vision sways Like dust among them; You can see the essential spark Ofsight, ofintuition, Travel from eye to eye. The next leg oflight that comes round Shows nothing where they have been, But words light up in the head To take their deep place in the darkness, Arcing quickly from image to image Like mica catching the sun: The words ofa love letter, Ofa letter to a long-dead father, To an unborn son, to a woman Long another man's wife, to her children, To anyone out ofreach, not born, Or dead, who lives again, Is born, is young, is the same: Anyone who can wait no longer Beneath the huge blackness oftime Which lies concealing, concealing What must gleam forth in the end, Glimpsed, unchanging, and gone When memory stands without sleep And gets its strange spark from the world. A Letter / 269 ...

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