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Me. I knew the stage was set, and I began To perform first saunt'ring then stalking Back and forth like a sentry faked As ifto run and at one brilliant move I made as though drawing a gun from my hipbone , the bite-sized children broke Up changing their concept oflaughter, But none ofthis changed his eyes, or changed My green glasses. Alert, attentive, He waited for what I could give him: My moves my throat my wildest love, The eyes behind my eyes. Instead, I left Him, though he followed me right to the end Ofconcrete. I wiped my face, and lifted off My glasses. Light blasted the world ofshade Back under every park bush the crowd Quailed from me I was inside and out Ofmyself and something was given a lifemission to say to me hungrily over And over and over your moves are exactly right For afew things in this world: we know you When you comeJ Green EyesJ Green Eyes. For theLast Wolverine They will soon be down To one, but he still will be For a little while still will be stopping The flakes in the air with a look, Surrounding himselfwith the silence Ofwhitening snarls. Let him eat The last red meal ofthe condemned To extinction, tearing the guts For the Last Wolverine / 273 From an elk. Yet that is not enough For me. I would have him eat The heart, and, from it, have an idea Stream into his gnawing head That he no longer has a thing To lose, and so can walk Out into the open, in the full Pale ofthe sub-Arctic sun Where a single spruce tree is dying Higher and higher. Let him climb it With all his meanness and strength. Lord, we have come to the end Ofthis kind ofvision ofheaven, As the sky breaks open Its fans around him and shimmers And into its northern gates he rises Snarling complete in the joy ofa weasel With an elk's horned heart in his stomach Looking straight into the eternal Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all My way: at the top ofthat tree I place The New World's last eagle Hunched in mangy feathers giving Up on the theory offlight. Dear God ofthe wildness ofpoetry, let them mate To the death in the rotten branches, Let the tree sway and burst into flame And mingle them, crackling with feathers, In crownfire. Let something come Ofit something gigantic legendary Rise beyond reason over hills Ofice SCREAMING that it cannot die, That it has come back, this time On wings, and will spare no earthly thing: Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems / 274 That it will hover, made purely ofnorthern Lights, at dusk and fall On men building roads: will perch On the moose's horn like a falcon Riding into battle into holy war against Screaming railroad crews: will pull Whole traplines like fibres from the snow In the long-jawed night offur trappers. But, small, filthy, unwinged, You will soon be crouching Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion Ofbeing the last, but none ofhow much Your unnoticed going will mean: How much the timid poem needs The mindless explosion ofyour rage, The glutton's internal fire the elk's Heart in the belly, sprouting wings, The pact ofthe "blind swallowing Thing," with himself, to eat The world, and not to be driven offit Until it is gone, even ifit takes Forever. I take you as you are And make ofyou what I will, Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty Non-survivor. Lord) let me die but not die Out. The Bee To the football coaches ofClemson College, 1942 One dot Grainily shifting we at roadside and The Bee / 275 ...

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