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Wherever he may walk on the silent plain
There are the berries haunting him, the weeds
Lacquered with water tiding towards the cave
Of no return, - or drifting where his blade in vain
Besieged by river-mirth becomes a pattern of refraction,
He notes the cold unsmiling steeds, their gills
In tumult vaunting the liquid fall, the well-worn destiny
Of streams and time of day, these he regards in isolation,
For, tumbling past the dream, they are his moon and stars,
Inverted catkins fallen through the oiled glass,
Berries that had swept his face dry of the earth
And all its wish, - had passed the fringe of hands far
On the bank, and now were treading on the spiral
Of his death: the sea turned river, and he might not think
That as they rode the stairs theirs was a dead ascent,
Or that his breath was now become a pearl beyond inquiry
Draped in a prison, void of fire; and where they passed, the
Fallen
Berries, was his sky, split and miraculously circled through
The green gem, passaged with rain and all the water-burden
Of his song, waking with movement the dead lips, and he, the
pearl wall,
Tender and white against the flash of his massed
Fortune, learning from the sepulture of words where
They grew from him living, and of trees also,
And how each falling leaf must finally be lost.
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