Nocturne

Flintlike, her feet struck

Such a racket of echoes from the steely street,

Tacking moon-blued crooks from the black

Stone-built town, that she heard the quick air ignite

Its tinder and shake

A firework of echoes from wall

To wall of the dark, dwarfed cottages.

But the echoes died at her back as the walls

Gave way to fields and the incessant seethe of grasses

Riding in the full

Of the moon, manes to the wind,

Tireless, tied, as a moon-bound sea

Moves on its root. Though a mist-wraith wound

Up from the fissured valley and hung shoulder-high

Ahead, it fattened

To no family-featured ghost,

Nor did any word body with a name

The blank mood she walked in. Once past

The dream-peopled village, her eyes entertained no dream,

And the sandman's dust

Lost luster under her footsoles.

The long wind, paring her person down

To a pinch of flame, blew its burdened whistle

In the whorl of her ear, and like a scooped-out pumpkin crown

Her head cupped the babel.

All the night gave her, in return

For the paltry gift of her bulk and the beat

Of her heart was the humped indifferent iron

Of its hills, and its pastures bordered by black stone set

On black stone. Barns

Guarded broods and litters

Behind shut doors; the dairy herds

Knelt in the meadow mute as boulders;

Sheep drowsed stoneward in their tussocks of wool, and birds,

Twig-sleeping, wore

Granite ruffs, their shadows

The guise of leaves. The whole landscape

Loomed absolute as the antique world was

Once in its earliest sway of lymph and sap,

Unaltered by eyes,

Enough to snuff the quick

Of her small heat out, but before the weight

Of stones and hills of stones could break

Her down to mere quartz grit in that stony light

She turned back.