THROUGH January night we climbed by stream and wood and up this hill (but worst was the last, black ploughland that clogged and nearly broke our will), so, sweating, sprawled where wood and plough touched in the dark. "Midnight," we said (trees' skeleton canopy, a wind and winter overhead). "Midnight" — a brittle warmth and silence folded us then in threadbare ease (the wind, a bare-fanged hunter, tore, as it ran, the creaking trees). The wind — a spectral hunt of wolves yelped at the hooves of ghostly deer (the million, bitter stars danced, cold to the cruelty, to the fear). And then the wind grew long — I saw those heavens narrow to a cave swept by eternal storm; and at the mouth my minute grave. I was not desolate before, nor knew beyond an ultimate door the dropping, sudden void. I was not desolate before. |