POEMS
FABLE FROM THE CAYOOSH COUNTRY
As we lay at the lake edge, feet pointing northwest,
Our
thought pushed forward into the margins of silence.
There would be the crying of creeks, birds,
And animal young, but verbal silence.
A region crowded with nameless mountains.
Thorn branches sheltered the beach,
Graying the arrested twilight.
Indians p;;ed at our feet,
Averted profiles moving against the clear lake,
Against the boundaries of an inarticulate world.
We slept, and our minds crawled with words.
Footloose words ran about in our dreams.
I went, a missionary, into the mountains,
Taking the grammars of all languages.
I preached the blessing of the noun and verb,
But all was lost in the furred ear of the bear,
In the expressive ear of the young doe.
What the doe said with her ear, I understood.
What I said, she obviously did not.
Despairing, I flung my textbooks into a rocky pool,
And the stream turned through the volumes, speaking clearly.
"Where my monologue runs, there was once the debate of the
beasts.
The burrows bubbled with words, conversation
Issued from the mouths of caves.
Where there was speech there is now only my voice.
"Had the mountain goat need of his eloquence
To make of his native rocks a rostrum?
21
Did the beaver's young learn industrious ways of a proverb?
The humming bird was a fiction. What legend could please her?
