Blacklegs

The sheep has nipples, the boy said,

And fur all around. The sheep

Has black legs, his name is Blacklegs,

And a cry like breaking glass.

The glass is broken. The glass

Is broken, and the milk falls down.

The bee has a suffering softness,

The boy said, a ring of fur,

Like a ring of fire. He burns

The flowers he enters, the way

The rain burns the grass. The bee

Has six legs, six strong legs,

And when he flies, the legs

Whistle like a blade of grass

Brought to the lips and blown.

The boy said, The horse runs hard

As sorrow, or a storm, or a man

With a stolen purse in his shirt.

The horse’s legs are a hundred

Or more, too many to count,

And he holds a moon white as fleece

In his mouth, cups it like water

So it will not spill out.

And the boy said this. I am a boy

And a man. My legs are two,

And they shine black as the arrows

That drop down on my throat

And my chest to draw out the blood

The bright animals feed on,

Those with wings, those without,

The ghosts of the heart—whose

Hunger is a dress for my song.

The Wolf

The diseased dog lowered her head as I came close, as if to make

Of her head a shadow, something the next few hours

Would erase, swiftly, something of no account. And what came

To mind was the she-wolf, beneath the wild fig, nursing

The boys who would build what amounted to a lasting city

On this earth. And it was as if, on that hot afternoon, I was standing

Not in the empty aisle between the gardens, that have been

Reduced to nothing except the most rudimentary plants

And the eroding outlines of brick walls and barren terraces,

But in the white light of a studio, in which a sculptor,

Working from the only model he has, a poor dog, is carving

Out of the blackest of black stones a female wolf with two rows

Of triangular tits, which look like the twin rows of cedars the dog

Swam through and from which two boys are suspended,

Fat-thighed and fated. And the truth is both dog and wolf

Are ancient, for the sick dog comes not from the garden

But from another time, in another city, a sabbath day, foreign,

The street completely empty, the day shapely around me,

The houses, the walks, all ordered and white; and then

Out of the ordered whiteness proceeds a thing of great disorder,

A shape from the world of shadows, something to drive

Away. But I did not drive her away, though I could do

Nothing for her. And now I would make of her something

Better than she could make of herself—though the wolf

Is only remembered in her prime, and not as she must