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Beneath it, some being stumbles, And answers me slowly and greatly With a tongue as rasping as sawgrass. I lower my hands, and I listen To the beast that shall die ofits love. I sound my green trumpet again, And the whole wood sings in my palms. The vast trees are tuned to my bowstring And the deep-rooted voice I have summoned. I have carried it here from a playground Where I rolled in the grass with my brothers. Nothing moves, but something intends to. The water that puffed like a wing Is one flattened blaze through the branches. Something falls from the bank, and is swimming. My voice turns around me like foliage, And I pluck my longbow offthe limb Where it shines with a musical light, And crouch within death, awaiting The beast in the water, in love With the palest and gentlest ofchildren, Whom the years have turned deadly with knowledge: Who summons him forth, and now Pulls wide the great, thoughtful arrow. In the Tree House atNight And now the green household is dark. The half-moon completely is shining On the earth-lighted tops ofthe trees. To be dead, a house must be still. The floor and the walls wave me slowly; I am deep in them over my head. The needles and pine cones about me Are full ofsmall birds at their roundest, Their fists without mercy gripping Hard down through the tree to the roots To sing back at light when they feel it. Drowning with Others / 82 We lie here like angels in bodies, My brothers and I, one dead, The other asleep from much living, In mid-air huddled beside me. Dark climbed to us here as we climbed Up the nails I have hammered all day Through the sprained, comic rungs ofthe ladder Of broom handles, crate slats, and laths Foot by foot up the trunk to the branches Where we came out at last over lakes Ofleaves, offields disencumbered ofearth That move with the moves ofthe spirit. Each nail that sustains us I set here; Each nail in the house is now steadied By my dead brother's huge, freckled hand. Through the years, he has pointed his hammer Up into these limbs, and told us That we must ascend, and all lie here. Step after step he has brought me, Embracing the trunk as his body, Shaking its limbs with my heartbeat, Till the pine cones danced without wind And fell from the branches like apples. In the arm-slender forks ofour dwelling I breathe my live brother's light hair. The blanket around us becomes As solid as stone, and it sways. With all my heart, I close The blue, timeless eye ofmy mind. Wind springs, as my dead brother smiles And touches the tree at the root; A shudder ofjoy runs up The trunk; the needles tingle; One bird uncontrollably cries. The wind changes round, and I stir Within another's life. Whose life? Who is dead? Whose presence is living? When may I fall strangely to earth, In the Tree House at Night / 83 Who am nailed to this branch by a spirit? Can two bodies make up a third? To sing, must I feel the world's light? My green, graceful bones fill the air With sleeping birds. Alone, alone And with them I move gently. I move at the heart ofthe world. For theNightlyAscentofthe Hunter Orion Over aForest Clearing Now secretness dies ofthe open. Yet all around, all over, night Things are waking fast, Waking with all their power. Who can arise From his dilating shadow When one foot is longing to tiptoe And the other to take the live Stand ofa tree that belongs here? As the owl's gaze Most slowly begins to create Its sight from the death ofthe sun, As the mouse feels the whole wood turn The gold ofthe owl's new eyes, And the fox moves Out ofthe ground where he sleeps, No man can stand upright And drag his body forth Through an open space in the foliage Unless he rises As does the hunter Orion, Thinking to cross a blue hollow Through the dangers oftwilight, Feeling that he must run And that he will Drowning with Others / 84 ...

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