The fire is under the pulse
Animals leap through the nets
The ring clamors with brightness
Dust peppers the arteries
While I lie in this hot dumbness
Fingers rattle off improbable verbs
Telling of one history
Penetrating all things
Fire wild beasts
Winding cave-shells
Hounds that slipped night’s leash
Are eating my dry light vocabulary
They howl in tongues
And when they turn for dawn
Are confused by their foreign throats
And the rocks’ prehistoric
Music they half understand
I would like to touch the fire itself
The pure barrage under the blood
Telling what time is
Roosters insisting
Morning all day long
Shaggy with unspoken desire
Waiting to overleap the word
The act that has forgotten silence
I search for that cool green heart
I have found flaming jungles of parrots
If I could filter them I might
Hear that whiteness under all
Settle words in a pearl haft
Balance on its point the great white bear
Auroch and mammoth
And the never rising whale
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