Beneath a street lamp, a hare,
deviating from the road to happiness:

its colour unprecedented,
its location undocumented.

Another fallacy occurs—

tunneling up from depths of snow,
standing beneath another lamp.

Between heaven and earth,
accidents wash the landscape.

A plain of hares treading
on a falling roof.

With clear sight through darkness,
they set the snowy path on fire.


VIII

A new world grows
in winter’s fecundity.

This coming spring
a new language will arrive.

Birds gone astray will find a way home
and take off with new grammar.

Shivering hares let out a cry.
Gods and philosophers answer.

A plantation of new faces blooms.
In prime snow, their eyes start to see

seeds that will feed a country,
roots that will breathe a hundred years.

Golden shafts pour down from heaven.
Hunters by the gate take aim.


IX

The mountains were white enough
for them to gaze enough
and die, generation
after generation.

But they stopped the snow.

Acid rain cascades
to deform the change.
Hunters fold back
into a low grass

and life lives again.

Ashes scatter the hares’ words
to the end of winters
over a range of mountains calcified
with sediments of their fur

so the rest can trample onward.

 

Sky, O sky,
bring me to your shoulders,
save me from the chasing blade of the world.

Sky, O sky,
drain from me the blood and tears,
love me in the choking hole of my chest.

In the chant, a faint tinkle echoes
between summits of fog.
One hare has escaped, to sing on —