THE HUNT

Running to you, as the sad beast runs home,
I lock the one door with proleptic dying
- then face the hound.  No further terror of him.

Out of the days of my savannah-daring
the wind blows back to you; the final cave
where only, life being so, is death worth doing

and worth withstanding.  An hour will carve
these spiral galleries; thought like a rodent
gnaws, into time, patterns as bodies curve.

Little the fox, although the roods are reddened,
mourns for that image; the drowned recalls
no dolphin; he does not fear the trident:

it is the fact, it is the freedom, kills;
manner of comfort, the closed place of harm,
are you - the core of my tightening circles,

that run to you as the sad beast runs home.