A green bear is rollingamong the blockhouses.No clues can help fill kinshipsinto their wordless windows...The horizon's trinkets are pencilgrey, in the whited-out bellwhere a round tung deafensthe eye like a puff of air.An altering haze of alder leavesapproaches the birches' grazed greenflecks upon allergenic air,the wood's horizon of breastfeathers.On to islands of silencein the watery roar, burnt drops of voicefall from the wind.Scan the badged belt before you:
Before this theybespoke a valleybankrolled a lakerevoked a villageforeclosed farmsteadsdistrained a river.In the sunFrom on a streaming slabbelly upwardshere it is.A white dead fish.
Each man who gives birth,freely or fated,has, through an accident,in the rush-hour mated,murdered his death.The grave-eclipsing babe'srevenge (for my wife,his mother, only incident)kills my ambition's lifeends reason's age.Now she plucks braided stringson a tearful loom, singsher uncarrying songfor two lives long.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,And the YearOn the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,Is lying.Come, Months, come away,From November to May,In your saddest array;Follow the bierOf the dead cold Year,And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knellingFor the Year;The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
I never lost as much but twice,And that was in the sod.Twice have I stood a beggarBefore the door of God!Angels -- twice descendingReimbursed my store --Burglar! Banker -- Father!I am poor once more!
The weight of misfortune has stooped my shouldersBut I don’t intend to stop for a good while yet;I afflict my own destinyAnd don’t want anyone to mourn for my fate.I’ve made peace with God on my lossesAnd agreed with him on the epitaphsThat should be written about my senseless wars.