Mare Ships

1. If the wolf bays a star Cloud has consumed the sky. Ripped-open bowels of mares, And the crows' black sails glide by. The azure thrusts no claws Through the snow's coughing stench. Gold-coned a garden of skulls Circles beneath the whinnying storm. You hear the cheerful knocking? - Sunset raking the groves. With chopped-off hands for oars, You row to the promised land. Swim higher, higher yet. From rainbow fly, crow-crake. Soon will the white tree let Fall my head's yellow leaf. 2. Who are you calling, field? Is this a pleasant dream? - Blue cavalry, the rye Outpacing woods and villages. Not rye but frost leaps the field. Smashed windows, gaping doors. Even the sunlight freezes Like a gelding's stale piss. My Russia, is this you ? Whose bucket Scours the scum of your snows ? Along the roads the voracious hounds Of dawn devour the land. They need not fly 'thither': Warmer to survive with man. God tossed the she-wolf a child, Man ate the she-wolf's cub. 3. Who's then to sing ? O who, In this mad blush of corpses? Look: women hatch a third Eye slowly from the womb. There! He crawls out, regards The moon, sees no fleshed bone. I sang the wondrous guest, it's clear, In self-derision. And where are the other Eleven with their tapers? If you must marry, poet, Take a sheep in a byre. Involve with straw and wool; Word-wax warm when you sing. Evil October strews from the brown Birch-hands its rings. 4. You beasts, come near, weep out Your grief in my cupped hands. Isn't it time the moon Stopped lapping the sky's clouds? Bitch-sisters, brother-hounds! I join you in the human pen. Needing no ships of mares, No sails of ravens. If from the broken walls Hunger seize me by the hair, Half my leg TH eat myself, And half toss you to gnaw. I do not go with man; Better to starve with you Than with a loved-one raise the ground, Stone for a fellow maniac. 5. Yet I will sing! I'll sing! Insulting neither goat Nor hare. If we can mourn a thing, So can we smile at it. We all bear the apple of joy. Close is the blast of the thief. Autumn's wise gardener Will crop my head's yellow leaf. Only one path to dusk garden. October wind bullies the grove. To know all things, and take nothing, A poet came into the world. He came to kiss the cows, Heart-hear the oaten crunch. Cut deeper, sickle-poems. Strew bird-cherry, bush of the sun!