The hooded cobra floating over the leaves
indescribably deceives,
flicking his delicate forked tongue in rings

The brutes that graved on walls of rock
Patterns of their shaggy God
Knew His thunder, knew His sun,

You stand in the first dumbness of the snow
        As finely, the gauze drop in pantomime,
        All detail fades upon your startled face

It is the tenderness you feel you know
You may have had the tenderness you miss.
Still in the mask you wear your tongue can go

Here, where confusion flowered in the rains‚
The whip-mad captains steered for Teneriffe.
Their cargo was a cry. Knouts in the sheds

It was amusing on that antique grass,
Seated halfway between the green and blue,
To waken music gentle and extinct.

Again that weary day when He must share
The wickedness of men who do not spare
Him birth. See now they penetrate His will,

I have come often to this forest,
home to these never not green trees.
Now, in a grove of auburn bones

I am the cargo of infinite ships 
That star bowed and blown race their teeth 
Along a dolphin free ocean that dips

Winter is thick as rock
In the quarry of icy season
And snow squeals underfoot: