The Auroras of Autumn

I

This is where the serpent lives, the bodiless. 
His head is air. Beneath his tip at night 
Eyes open and fix on us in every sky. 

Or is this another wriggling out of the egg, 
Another image at the end of the cave, 
Another bodiless for the body's slough? 

This is where the serpent lives. This is his nest, 
These fields, these hills, these tinted distances, 
And the pines above and along and beside the sea. 

This is form gulping after formlessness, 
Skin flashing to wished-for disappearances 
And the serpent body flashing without the skin. 

This is the height emerging and its base … 
These lights may finally attain a pole 
In the midmost midnight and find the serpent there, 

In another nest, the master of the maze 
Of body and air and forms and images, 
Relentlessly in possession of happiness. 

This is his poison: that we should disbelieve 
Even that. His meditations in the ferns, 
When he moved so slightly to make sure of sun, 

Made us no less as sure. We saw in his head, 
Black beaded on the rock, the flecked animal, 
The moving grass, the Indian in his glade.