To a Magnificent Spinner, Murdered

Gnats and an ant have gnawed your nimble bones — You who could spring and sprawl on your own thread Down half the meadow. Under tiny stones The ant has stored your essence. You are dead.

You stitched the air with level darts : the sun Slid on your silvers. Now they slant oblique Like strokes of rain. . . .

Your neighbors have begun To chew the cud of festoons. From the cheek Of this, your hairy enemy, dangles one Loop of his glee to tease your skeleton.

Wasps sting the grapes still, carry spider-spoil In twisted torment past your web and on Where their crude honey hangs in muddy cones. The ants are hurried. One huge bee intones. The pond is wrinkled with a velvet oil Where gnats will hatch, with dusk, another spawn.