So I Might Suffer

  So I might suffer without fail the vengeance of leaves
Crumbling, vein by vein, to the docks of autumn's dust
               And burn again in a rasping year
                          My fled blood
                      Both woke and broke
              Flood and voice over the sea-turning town.
So that the wail of the crickets might knock and enter
              Each sad shadow passage of the pulse
                              I woke
  Burning in the shining rivers that skip out of sight.

In the helping hurt of the one-armed weather
              Flinging hailstones and adders
         Down the ocean-thieving tunnel of the sky
                       Against this head
                  I swore all summer dumb
While the ministering crickets in the booming grass
   Chanted phylums of my blood about to be said
               And I stood in the summer's drum
                         Surrounded
               By the roaring going of the year.

Ignorant of thistlery we walked in our mystery
         Arm in arm like the burning boughs
Friends against death in the summer's long breath,
          And like the sun we sauntered
                 Drunk and wandered
      Through the closed book of the heart;
And I was sky and sunlight in the chapters of the grass.
                 And understanding
                      I sang:
   Oceans in acorns my strumming mermaids are.