POEMS
EVENING WOLVES
Generality of white light at Creation
Blindly contracted into mere orbs of yellow
Sun and cool of moon and of icier
Starlight. But where does it hang, the spore
Left of this narrowed blue? Midwinter wolves running
Under such final light flash signals from something
Blue like the false ball of an eye which
is
That of no wolf, but
is
his
who wields
Blues of the cold alone; of hurrying lateness,
Shortness of north and its furthest dark hours;
Blue not of sky ice, but of whiteness of
Grayness of wolf. And of other wolves
As
in a rush of judgment, sudden from shadows,
Stopped, like the icy axe of a frozen comber
Midcrested, edging some condemned, empty
Shore. These are shadows of blue of wolves
Under the pine-broken verge the line of sky makes
With the wide, distant ice that our gaze had strained for:
Blue not of high eyes, but of blindness of
Failure. Of wolf.
An
indented line
Bares the blue light unfaIlen, general, coldly
Creating only itself. Pelted in thunder,
Hard-eared, like wandering stars they skim these
Dimmed, clouded fields, this blackness of blue.
