Natural remedy

He came at my request, at last. And in reply to my, "What is it?"
  said grimly, taking a close look at me—

"Look, it's as if someone's stippled a sunset here, & mixed in ravens;
   stars don't shine but snarl and snake

The bass that bite lie dead with their gills open, washed ashore,
  and say, 'Take the spinners from my heart'

Jays crowd round jagged edges, or else go careering off by themselves:
  I see their crests through skeletal boughs

And in the tree's hempen-shade heartless soulless eyes of crab appear,
  or heartless bees under a heartless lily

The sun that tenderly and shyly eggs on shoots, somewhere somehow
  leaves a pale soil of roots, blackberries

And where there used to be ash-tree's calm is an oak's monstrous roots,
  spongy & scaly, without a drop of resin left"

Sweeping his hand over my back, a final time, he finally said,
  in reply to my "What can it be?"

"If it moves low in the night, sprouting oaks along lonely gravel roads,
  please, please see me at once."