If you cannot trust the dog, the faithful one? And is this anyway a dog? The shadows move, Dog and dog, two lanky figures, three, sniffing The garden’s charred terrain, the darkening grass
The bleeding beds of flowers, sniffing the stones And lunging at the rabbits that spring from the beds, Wet creatures, mad with haste, mad and wet And white as the half-hearted moon that stepped
Behind the clouds and has not come back....The rain Fell hard, and now the mist rises, consolidates, disperses, That thought, this, your face, mine, the shapes Complicating the air around the abandoned birdhouse,
Big as a summer hotel, thirty rooms For thirty birds, thirty perches from which to sing. Such is the moon when it is full. A giant birdhouse Tilted high on a steel pole, a pale blue box
Full of the shredded sheet music of long-dead birds.... The dogs move fast. How will I follow? And which one? They are not in agreement. If the dog cannot be trusted, Then what? The foot? But the foot is blind, the grass
Cold through the thin socks, the instep bared like a neck. And now the flowers rise. The mums and asters, The tall gladioli knocked back as the rain creeps up In the mist, and the mist thickens and moves about me
Like a band of low-bred mummers, dripping scent, Pulling my hair, my arms, trying to distract me, But still I hear it, the dark sound that begins at the edge Of the mind, at the far edge of the uncut field
Beyond the garden—a low braying, donkey Or wolf, a low insistent moan. If I whistle Will the dogs come? Can I gather their trailing leashes And hold them in my hand? They cannot be held.
How pale the paint of the birdhouse. How ghastly pale The sound of the cry coming closer....If I forsake The dogs?.... If I forsake the mummers?....If I step Like a fool into the glassy outer darkness?.... O self....