That night the dark was sultry, steamy with lust.

Cornflowers, lit up by dry lightning, flashed

Directly into a deer’s eye; into forest,

By foreign-pupils startled, deer then dashed.

The blooms azured her head, fled cervinely

And, greedy, watched the world cornfloweredly.

Having, amid a boundless meadow, found

Itself, a poppy with a shrill cry bled

Into a purple-plumaged cock, yet made no sound;

It shook, in his red comb, the very blood—

In darkness crowed, beak rent, poisoned with fear,

Till crows of other roosters crowded near.

The barley, ears with a thick longing golden,

With sudden spite bristled in rankled quills;

Crushed itself into a golden hedgehog; ran,

In transit pricking the herbs’ flimsy walls;

Whined, sulked at flowers in urchin-array . . .

But what it felt and lived through none can say.

And in what nettles did I burn my soul

That I flit stealthily, cross-country, at the edge?

Why do the flowers watch me, skeptical?

Have I some night-self, that’s beyond my knowledge?

To clasp my temples thus, what have I done?

What was I that night, which today is gone?