Look at the goose,

            enraged with Spring,

 

to whom we leave 

the remedies of dreams,

and if you are joyful 

seeing the chicks 

 

that follow, recall 

some small laughter

in their bouncing steps. 

All things wish to fly. 

 

Only you and I are weighed 

down by want, by Spring, 

by each other's frail, 

failing hands; 

 

when I, a child, 

found the snarling bat,

before the red door, in the red

clover, wings tinsel-torn

 

by some midnight monster,

perhaps an edgy owl, perhaps

a hidden, humming wire,

and as it found me 

 

with its biting, beady hate,

the turgid red clover

already busy

with punctual bees 

 

who ran, first thing, 

to catch the dawn’s peonies, 

only to find them matted 

by the bat’s fanatic, 

 

frothing jaws purling

eddies of sweet pink sick,

I wept, and with 

weeping hands, killed it, 

 

(as that was its want)

and buried it,

so that it too might fly

in visions without remedy.