Natural medicine

 

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 pink gills open, washed ashore,
and say, 'Take the spinners from my heart'

Jays crowd round the jagged moon, or else go careering off by themselves:
I see their crests through skeletal clouds

And in the tree's gnarly sac the heartless soulless eyes of a crab appear,
or heartless lily bees

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

And where there used to be the ash-tree's calm is an oak's monstrous face,
spongy & scaly, not a drop of resin left"

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

"The soulless crab that moves low in the night, over gravel roads, stiff-legged
will burrow soon & lie with the heart