JAGUAR

Nasal intonations of light and clicking tongues... publicity of windows stoning me with pent-up cries... smells of abattoirs... smells of long-dead meat.

Some day-end- while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket off the warm body of a squaw, and the jaguars are out to kill... with a blue-black night coming on and a painted cloud stalking the first star- I shall go alone into the Silence... the coiled Silence... where a cry can run only a little way and waver and dwindle and be lost.

And there...
where tiny antlers clinch and strain
as life grapples in a million avid points,
and threshing things
strike and die,
letting their hate live on
in the spreading purple of a wound...
I too
will make covert of a crevice in the night,
and turn and watch...
nose at the cleft's edge.