After the Romantics

I'll not go hunting In that kind of wood, Where the beasts are all but human, And the water not good;

For they look at your arrow With ambiguous eyes, The sooner to make their sorrow In your own heart rise,

Rise like the black water Of their tainted springs, That deadens the spurt of laughter With imaginings.

If any ask me follow To a wood of that kind, I'll call him bravery's fellow And stay behind

To shoot my own acre Where the beasts are thin, But there's never an eye's flicker That calls me kin,

To listen to the light patter Of my sole spring, That gives only water, plain water, Not some other thing.