Friday, March 30, 2012

EARTH ~








THE CREEPY CRAWL



There's a stink in the old farmhouse
Maybe a dead squirrel or rat or could it be a cat?


We've a hot water kettle on the woodstove
With apples and cinnamon


Nutmeg
Be patient with it


It takes a long time for a life to disappear







"steady chipmunk"
photo © bob arnold






FEAST OF SNAKES ~




EARTH ~





Salvatore Quasimodo
(1901-1968)




MARCH WIND (AFTER QUASIMODO)



I will know nothing of my life but its mysteries,
the dead cycles of the breath and sap.


I shall not know whom I loved, or love
now that in the random winds of March


I am nothing but my limbs. I fall
into myself, and the years numbered in me.


The thin blossom is already streaming from my boughs.
I watch the pure calm of its only flight.



trans. Don Paterson