my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom

had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not

be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,

and I stood still, and while they stood

quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.

‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself

in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray

into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.

When they said, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’

I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me,

‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day

in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’

When they asked me would I like to contribute

I said no, and when they had collected

more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.

When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,

and then went off by myself and did more

than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said,

‘go and organize the International Brotherhood

of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing

everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.

Going against men, I have heard at time a deep harmony

thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what,

I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest

way to come to the truth. It is one way.

The Farmer and the Sea

The sea always arriving,

hissing in pebbles, is breaking

its edge where the landsman

squats on his rock. The dark

of the earth is familiar to him,

close mystery of his source

and end, always flowering

in the light and always

fading. But the dark of the sea

is perfect and strange,

the absence of any place,

immensity on the loose.

Still, he sees it is another

keeper of the land, caretaker,

shaking the earth, breaking it,

clicking the pieces, but somewhere

holding deep fields yet to rise,

shedding its richness on them

silently as snow, keeper and maker

of places wholly dark. And in him

something dark applauds.

Awake at Night

Late in the night I pay

the unrest I owe

to the life that has never lived

and cannot live now.

What the world could be

is my good dream

and my agony when, dreaming it,

I lie awake and turn

and look into the dark.

I think of a luxury

in the sturdiness and grace

of necessary things, not

in frivolity. That would heal

the earth, and heal men.

But the end, too, is part

of the pattern, the last

labor of the heart:

to learn to lie still,

one with the earth

again, and let the world go.

The Heron

While the summer’s growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.