Black Earth

Openly, yes,

with the naturalness

         of the hippopotamus or the alligator

         when it climbs out on the bank to experience the

sun, I do these

things which I do, which please

         no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-

         merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

in view was a

renaissance; shall I say

         the contrary? The sediment of the river which

         encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used

to it, it may

remain there; do away

         with it and I am myself done away with, for the

         patina of circumstance can but enrich what was

there to begin

with. This elephant skin

         which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of

         the coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light

can filter—cut

into checkers by rut

         upon rut of unpreventable experience—

         it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the

hairy toed. Black

but beautiful, my back

         is full of the history of power. Of power? What

         is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never

be cut into

by a wooden spear; through-

         out childhood to the present time, the unity of

         life and death has been expressed by the circumference

described by my

trunk; nevertheless, I

         perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after

         all; and I am on my guard; external poise, it

has its centre

well nurtured—we know

         where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?

         My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of

the wind. I see

and I hear, unlike the

         wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made

         to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear,

that tree trunk without   

roots, accustomed to shout

         its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact   

         by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that   

spiritual   

brother to the coral

         plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light

         becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to

the I of each,

a kind of fretful speech

         which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?

         Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that

phenomenon

the above formation,   

         translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—

         that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first

time, a substance

needful as an instance

         of the indestructibility of matter; it   

         has looked at the electricity and at the earth-

quake and is still

here; the name means thick. Will

         depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no

         beautiful element of unreason under it?