But with a marbled black and red substance,

Dense and sweet as charred flesh. She shone

The doe, her four heads, held high and perfectly still,

Facing in four different directions. And then I saw

Something else, darker, protruding from her breast.

It was a fifth neck and head, hanging upside down

In front, like the useless third leg of Siamese twins

Joined at the torso that hangs out of the spine,

And is amputated at birth, or like the water-darkened

Rudder of a ship. I heard the hot air sucking in and out

Of the doe’s many nostrils, in and out. The mist

Grew darker, and I felt afraid, for I knew even before

My eyes confirmed it, that the fifth head was not

The doe’s head at all, as I had thought, but the head

Of a grown child that the doe was trying to deliver

From her breast, and I knew that the child would never

Be born, but must ride always with her, his body

Embedded in hers, his head up to the sky. I wanted

To reach up and touch that head. But I did not do so.

I kept thinking that the doe would disappear, or that

She would say something, that her four mouths, five,

Would open and she would speak, but she did not disappear,

And she did not speak. A doe will never speak.

She will bark or cry out like a child if alarmed, but she

Will not speak. The mist smelled of warm milk,

And the doe’s muteness grew loud, and louder still,

Until it was as dizzying as the sound of many trumpets

Blowing a single everlasting note. And I thought

Of the tongue, of how it is a wound, a pool of blood,

And of how you should bind a wound. And I thought

Of the earth covered with poor forked creatures

Walking around with broken faces, their substance

Pouring out in the form of words. And I thought of how

The mist would thicken further until it thinned,

All at once, to nothing, in the night air that smelled

Of sewage and poor man’s roses, and of how the sound

Of the water dripping from the trees would return,

Tinnier, less insistent, as the water grew colder.

And I knew that soon on the high hill above the grotto

The fine dry snow would start to fall, and the field

Would draw silence to itself, and then as the air

Grew soft, the dry snow would turn to wet snow,

And the wet snow would lie heavy against the earth,

And the silence would multiply, a dark mass of pulp

And wings stirring above a darker bed, until nothing

Was recognizable to itself, and things were as if dead,

Wrapped in sheets and soaked in spices and oil, and death

A great mercy. And the snow seemed to hiss softly,

Or the falling mist hissed softly, or the water sliding