Tagore Variations
5
after John Clare
Birds trace their separations through
coiled dusk—infinity: am I native there?
It is kindness to try at least the heart’s
ineptitude, mouse rustling in a backyard
pile of leaves—walk it out in its danger,
gift the hawk won’t disparage.
But suppose the heart survives
across the lawns between the house
cats’ point of repeating their sufferings
at the back windows—what if the heart
nests in the field’s unpredictable grass
beside the Presbyterian church?
Maybe an old poet comes lumbering
along, considering love’s reciprocal
nature to nourish its roots in a wild grief—
he kicks the nest accidentally and sees
the mother dragging her young on
little pink nipples, nervously
scooting for another mound of grass, and
doesn’t recognize them at first. He knows
they may end a stiff chip of fur
in the trap the old man set, or betrayed
by comfort, jolt of poison, staggering
on a linoleum square. He sees them
beneath the brazen nothingness of things,
creatures like himself, grotesque where
water sucks lazily on stones.