living under moist bark
on a green slope somewhere)
now in their casual magnitude
and stillness they seem of the gods,
seem like the white bulls of a god
driven into this place between cliff s
and sea, and possessing it
now in the repose of their might
people are in the streets. In other cities, streets are deserted in the
evening. You walk by yourself, emptiness, emptiness."
heaving half its roots into the air
(out of the dirt still gripped in its roots
a group of ferns and vines is growing)
that leans upon another tree, in turn
holding bent sharply beneath its weight
an even smaller tree -- it is a system
of disasters criss-crossed, still happening
slowly (a violence of placid monsters) in silence
on the way out -- in falling it, too, turned upright
disc shape perhaps eighteen feet high:
heart wood of its life -- a huge crude medallion: