Exile

These hills are sandy.

Trees are dwarfed here.

Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,

Complain in dusty pine-trees.

Yellow

Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,

Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit

Show sharply in it, as they might in snow.

But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do?

The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,

Are grey and shrivelled.

And the men who live

Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes.

Bring water with you if you come to live here —Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so

That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas.

Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing,

Mountains of ice.

You will have need of

Profundities and peaks of wet and cold.

Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier,

Birds of a golden colour, who will

Of leaves that do not wither, watery

That heavily hang on long melodious

In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys.

I have now been here — how many years?

Years unnumbered.

My hands grow clawlike.

My eyes are large and starved.

I brought no bird with me,

I have no

Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow.

Some day, for lack of these,

I’ll spin a

Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang

Face downward, like a spider, blown as

As ghost of leaf.

Crows will caw about me.

Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.