The fatter rains are beneath the canopy, but deafened
Come the flowers whom I’d sing mournful songs,
Our latter-day hymns of Benjamin Gibberd
So, I say to them all as they to the earth, twinges of falsehood
In loved embraces to the earth they bind themselves
(But the quiet soothes of incurable ills).
Their voices become intolerable candors of intolerable people
That echo between the ash and locust who seem to melt darker.
This empty way comes in sudden inspiration, a heart
Ready to fill with blood again, to beat love and passion
Into nature’s core and I stand in its middle, crushed
By endless gallons of living things; but, I need not surprise
Or overwork myself since the airs taken for granted
That I put on or breath, settle in my lungs
Pressing heavy with every love that could have been
Or every natal anxiety come to plume.
As flies, I am not ready to make vines spring or reek up the woods
And my feet take the flight, take the prayer—I’ve only ever
Prayed to myself, anyway—this tilled earth of my hand,
What will come of me someday, grows out moss
In fibres of a self-conceit remaining in sorrow and censure
Youth and in pleasure, run until my foot gives way in the mud.
I lay sinking at the rude audience of tongues and tangles
And the open world, far too distant to really hear the speeches
They’ve heard far too many times. Perhaps I’ve saddened them
They do not respond to the resigned gurgle of the mud
But, there are tears in the woods, too marked up like pistils
Of much-quitted innocence given no reason to act
No comfort are they, nor am I to them
The only true comfort now, is the weight of the world
And the wind on my back.
