SHORTY'S KEY

as he goes after Breeze's notes
distant as Goal

he's captured
by the passions of the passing
nightingales which can never be quite refused

confused
with the string around the finger
searching for worlds
he's never lost
he's captured

stumbling into
the purity of the Wind
recruiting to his side
the fruits putrid

& then wondering
how it has come
to become
only the worms are fighting
on his side!

encrusted with the mud dry mires
of all the centuries
to his sadness
he discovers

the Spring showers do not give out themselves
but merely wash all away

the Somethings
overwhelming us men
made of Dust
weighed down by the muds
of the wet World

the reddest
blood-youth of our eyes
briskly walking

over the Winter's white wilderness
Wisdom confused/confusing
with the old watching

the unbearable barren desolation
of the Snows panics & panics

he's captured

committing his mad Causes
to an insanest of course
fastening the squalor of his breath
over the handiest high branch

trying to hang himself in
bones shaking in the terror
of having known the green
& can still smell it
the eyes lying frozen

Dust staring into
the sympathy of the passing Wind
whose uncatchable words
uncatchably go
after him

Yet coldness itself freezes
the Dust over him
where he lies watching

O, refusing
to admit him
back to the Dust! only
a slab of meat
stored (up) in God's icebox
& frozen he's caught & captured

as the Spring winds wind their ways
the plentifulest Woods' life
coming closer--drawn here
not just probably only because
of his stink (since this dies with him)

but because of their sympathy
with the dust (all
living things are in sympathy with)

they somehow know
all Death's purely ornamental

& little matters to
the passing honor of having been
the sometimes keeper of the green

because the nightingales of the Dust
all of the Woodland green
after it is the Spring
ever so silently the keepers of the White
their eyes come

gathering & gathering in order
to collect whatever interest's due them
they shall observe the Dust

then men (whose eyes are merely
the today-eternal
looks of the Spring)
fermenting in the flesh

Dust can't observe
his immortality passing
out of his Spring

onto the Winter's invisible yet
everywhere green