July Phantom

In the declivities of love, those terse gamuts
Where the harsh words are piled like stooks in a field,
And the pleasures of unicorns languish . . .
In the sharp fastness where critical love dares pitch
His fort, his dull dose of logic, his bitterness,
And teases remaining glory into the pit.
O mountain love and the fresh perverseness of brooks,
Bright fields where the flax of appetite grows!
Come, let us go into the bleak hedges, traverse their gloom,
Only that we come at last to the meadows of down
Where the moon lies on its ear and the grass is crushed
Heavily, as two masses huddle amid rushes.
See, the evening star has already sunk, dawn’s Satan,
Pressed into the streaming red of the sky.
The sunset falters, but is happily absorbed
By the black, the unfaltering night . . . .
I am alone in the house, the wind howls at the edges.
In the yard a black skunk is mousing its unmolested way
Through the sticks and stones of our silly civilization.
Let the wind blow. The crippled and tottering house has stood
   years,
The gales have fought it and the rain washed it of color,
But it stands and stands—not like love,
But stands like a house, effortless.
In the declivities of love come veiled threats,
Flush in the banners of letters; their red tongues
Hang out and their teeth glitter toward triumph
With an oily persuasion, a terror, as of heaven.
They win; but new meadows grow. New bones
Flourish and clatter among the grave-clothes of the dead.
One may walk up or down on the declivities of love.
I am dizzy with the stretch downward.
I wheel like a heron and strive and persist—
It is dawn and the sun wins. Sky blossoms.
All the harsh insects are wrapping their stinging buds
About our lips and eyes. The deepness is height.
Declivity is ascension and his arms probable—
Soon the gethsemane of drowning comes—
Let sleep’s death follow. I’ll be the first leaf
To fall, the first falling leaf, ripe and orange,
I will bruise his hand with my warning.
Mountain, are you never bruised? Will you stand forever?
You have tears in your eyes but your cheeks stiffen
And my leaf-veins shatter and bleed.
I have failed to demolish—anything, anything.
But the wind still howls, so I suppose I am sane,
And this is a true skunk whose bright fur I am stroking.