Entire Known World So Far

What’s meant to be wind emerges from what’s

presumably a god’s mouth, as if  people

thought that way, once, as I have read they did,

though I have never believed it. Yes,

the stag inexplicably there, on a raft

at sea, how the light catches in the runneled

fur of a dog’s underpaws as he steers

across dream; yes, the gods and their

signs, if you want, everywhere—

but the wind is the wind. The map makes

the world seem like a human body

when it’s been stripped and you can finally

see it for the world it is: plunderable—

almost, in places, as if asking for it—

who wouldn’t want to lay waste to it,

the map suggests, suggest the hands

that made the map, with the kind of

grace that proves grace can

be a sturdiness, too.

___

              But the world is not like a human body.

              Or the dark that, just past twilight, overtakes a canyon.

              Or the shiver of sleigh bells on the collar

              of an invisible donkey, scratching itself

              in the dark,

              in the cold of it—

                                             donkey bells ...