All morning in the woods I heard the bushes choke
Among dead boughs that creaked and groaned,
And no other murmur than the flurry of live prey
Grappling in the wind’s slow teeth.
A starling toppled near the river-run, black
as stone. A garter snake shivered
Up a root and instantly turned brown. It began
On such a day prophets used
To rave about – “Stiff-necked mankind, remember
Sodom and God’s frown!” Through miles
Of tensing acreage only two eyes peeped when it
Came down. The road became a falls
Where hubbubs fell to foam across a glazed surrendering
Of channelled stone. In the hollow beat
Of some annihilating warmth, tumorous old stumps
Were ground to muck. “Will it be day
Again?” I heard the brittle windows ask the lightning
Flash, and tremble three full hours
As it spoke. Often, while the sea coughed distantly,
Infamous last words of misanthropes
Ransacked my brain for counter-prayers. Below the eaves,
Crackling like a greasy frying
Pan, only a floral lampshade quavered hope.
When at last the silence trickled in, I found
The fungi like great plastered wounds,
The stupifying sweetness everywhere. And when
The weather turned gigantically
And padded off, I found the world it left nearby:
On the bloated attic floor,
Two drowned mice; through the skylight, one fir
Permanently bowed; above the flooded
Garden, the first fierce dart of an exploratory crow.
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