Song, by W. D. Snodgrass

Observe the cautious toadstools
still on the lawn today
though they grow over-evening;
sun shrinks them away.
Pale and proper and rootless,
they righteously extort
their living from the living.
I have been their sort.

See by our blocked foundation
the cold, archaic clay,
stiff and clinging and sterile
as children mold at play
or as the Lord God fashioned
before He breathed it breath.
The earth we dig and carry
for flowers, is strong in death.

Woman, we are the rich
soil, friable and humble,
where all our murders rot,
where our old deaths crumble
and fortify my reach
far from you, wide and free,
though I have set my root
in you and am your tree.

Song, by W. D. Snodgrass

Sweet beast, I have gone prowling,
a proud rejected man
who lived along the edges
catch as catch can;
in darkness and in hedges
I sang my sour tone
and all my love was howling
conspicuously alone.

I curled and slept all day
or nursed my bloodless wounds
until the squares were silent
where I could make my tunes
singular and violent.
Then, sure as hearers came
I crept and flinched away.
And, girl, you've done the same.

A stray from my own type,
led along by blindness,
my love was near to spoiled
and curdled all my kindness.
I find no kin, no child;
only the weasel's ilk.
Sweet beast, cat of my own stripe,
come and take my milk.

(Both from Heart's Needle)  ¶ 12:23 PM