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A ScreenedPorch in the Country All ofthem are sitting Inside a lamp ofcoarse wire And being in all directions Shed upon darkness, Their bodies softening to shadow, until The come to rest out in the yard In a kind of blurred golden country In which they more deeply lie Than ifthey were being created OfHeavenly light. Where they are floating beyond Themselves, in peace, Where they have laid down Their souls and not known it, The smallest creatures, As every night they do, Come to the edge ofthem And sing, ifthey can, Or, ifthey can't, simply shine Their eyes back, sitting on haunches, Pulsating and thinking ofmusic. Occasionally, something weightless Touches the screen With its body, dies, Or is unmurmuringly hurt, But mainly nothing happens Except that a family continues To be laid down In the midst ofits nightly creatures, Not one ofwhich openly comes Into the golden shadow Where the people are lying, Emitted by their own house So humanly that they become More than human, and enter the place Ofsmall, blindly singing things, Drowning with Others / I I2 Seeming to rejoice Perpetually, without effort, Without knowing why Or how they do it. TheDreamFlood I ask and receive The secret offalling unharmed Forty nights from the darkness ofHeaven, Coming down in sheets and in atoms Until I descend to the moon Where it lies on the ground And finds in my surface the shining It knew it must have in the end. No longer increasing, I stand Taking sunlight transmitted by stone, And then begin over fields To expand like a mind seeking truth, Piling fathoms ofbrightness in valleys, Letting no hilltop break through me. As I rise, the moon rises also As the reborn look ofcreation In the animals' eyes, In the eyes ofhorses in stables Who feel their warm heaviness swarm Out oftheir mouths like their souls; Their bodies in cell blocks ofwood Hang like a dust that has taken Their shapes without knowing ofhorses. When the straight sun strikes them at last Their grains congeal as they must And nail their scuffed hoofs to the earth. I withdraw, in feeling the cloud OfHeaven call dazzlingly to me To drop offmy horses and forests, To leave a vague mist in the valleys The Dream Flood / I 13 ...

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