Why they kill gypsy moths

 "All visible things need a cross... All intelligible things need a tomb"
                                                                                       (Maximus Confessor)
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  I got it from the rose & cicadas

(as also later from the fruit flies that watch for Ruth)

  & they said the gypsy, dying gypsy,   

who looks up at a thick rind sky as it lies eye-level over

  the sweet loofah & rye, —said it dies

& becomes dust that dries on the stalks, up to the top

  of both stalk and sky

And rising in this way, star-stitched the gypsy turns to dust

  But, again, just as they said

and I also sensed it from the fateful flutter & wings of dust,

  (wings praiseworthy for flight!)

a moth lifts & arcs, soul-bearing & frail & stalks past pig-weed

  & grasses with its cane,

knocking out bits of shale and algae to fight the slimy world

  Gypsy's silly cane! cloaked in dust,

against all that world's hard slimy shale as it tries to look deep

  (dusty moth!) into a pond's own hurt

or a lake's dark stony seed, and tame all that carnal hurt

  of rock, algae and dirt

Straining hard towards the world, when it flies , they say, it rises

  with a cane made of rye!

the gypsy moth that cruelly dies in dark serpentine woods