Forest

Safe in their careful wood The maidens ride Pure unicorns.

No menace from those horns Nor from the beasts' Devoted eyes,

White, empty of surprise, Like water clear And without taste.

Timorous, blond and chaste, The maidens see Nothing but green,

Which, an embroidered screen Of metaphors, Hedges them in.

Then, in the dappled shade Red stallions ride Breaking the grass.

Swollen, the huntsmen pass With brass horns And the day's eyes.

Red beyond paraphrase Intransigently force Their questionnaire.

The sun's in their blond hair, And on their lips The words boom,

As, in some living room, Nothing is said But certainty.

White as the underside Of a still leaf, Actual as blood

But less to be understood, The unicorns People the green air.

They are intruders there Between the sun And the moon's light.

Discoursing of the night As if it were Day spoken,

They, past all language broken, Humbled beyond disguise, Subdue their knowing eyes.