St. Louis, and: The Spaniards

144 L. S. KLATT ST. LOUIS Thus grew the aftermath where so-and-so had a feeling of if. The white crow had been befogged as it ate out the eyes of a possum, &, while the woodpeckers were whacking away at elm trees, roadside, it went on asking itself what it now knew. The crow was a constant thing in a brownfield puddled with standing water. And one might rhapsodize, as spring carried on, of the whiteness losing its novelty. So-and-so could have spent a lifetime descrying what might have been. So-and-so could have been a huckleberry looking west of Mizzou. 145 L. S. KLATT THE SPANIARDS Absent-minded & unapproachable, I walk in the tilled field. I am not, in fact, here; I am only anticipating the Catalan farm & a lane of carob trees. A butterfly wing produces a shock, as does a sardine tin & the unattainable sea that is at eye-level. I listen for the dialogue of insects & the whimper of a rabbit that is held by the ears by a peasant woman. She is nude except for her cyclopean hips, which are true & false the way the bone of the moon is not yet blue, not yet superlative. What makes the scene real is the mule-drawn cart that disappears in a cloud of dust, just as turpentine erases forkfuls of sunshine from my mouth. ...