1 
We came to visit the cow  
Dying of fever, 
Towle said it was already  
Shoveled under, in a secret  
Burial-place in the woods. 
We prowled through the woods  
Weeks, we never 
 
Found where. Other 
Children other summers 
Must have found the place 
And asked, Why is it 
Green here? The rich 
Guess a grave, maybe, 
The poor think a pit 
 
For dung, like the one 
We shoveled in in the fall, 
That came up a brighter green 
The next year, that 
Could as well have been 
The grave of a cow 
Or something, for all that shows. 
 
2 
We found a cowskull once; we thought it was 
From one of the asses in the Bible, for the sun  
Shone into the holes through which it had seen 
Earth as an endless belt carrying gravel, had heard 
Its truculence cursed, had learned how human sweat  
Stinks, and had brayed — shone into the holes 
With solemn and majestic light, as if some 
Skull somewhere could be Baalbek or the Parthenon. 

That night passing Towle's Barn 
We saw lights. Towle had lassoed a calf 
By its hind legs, and he tugged against the grip 
Of the darkness. The cow stood by, chewing millet. 
Derry and I took hold, too, and hauled. 
It was sopping with darkness when it came free. 
It was a bullcalf. The cow mopped it awhile, 
And we walked around it with a lantern, 
 
And it was sunburned, somehow, and beautiful. 
It took a teat as the first business 
And sneezed and drank at the milk of light. 
When we got it balanced on its legs, it went wobbling  
Toward the night. Walking home in darkness 
We saw the July moon looking on Freedom, New Hampshire,  
We smelled the fall in the air, it was the summer, 
We thought, Oh this is but the summer! 
 
3 
Once I saw the moon 
Drift into the sky like a bright 
Pregnancy pared 
From a goddess who had to 
Keep slender to remain beautiful — 
Cut loose, and drifting up there 
To happen by itself -- 
And waning, in lost labor; 
 
As we lost our labor 
Too — afternoons 
When we sat on the gate 
By the pasture, under the Ledge, 
Buzzing and skirling on toilet- 
papered combs tunes 
To the rumble-seated cars 
Taking the Ossipee Road 
 
On Sundays; for 
Though dusk would come upon us 
Where we sat, and though we had  
Skirled out our hearts in the music,  
Yet the not-yet dandruffed 
Harps we skirled it on 
Had done not much better than  
Flies, which buzzed, when quick 
 
We trapped them in our hands,  
Which went silent when we  
Crushed them, which we bore  
Downhill to the meadowlark's 
Nest full of throats, which 
Derry charmed and combed 
With an Arabian air, while I  
Chucked crushed flies into 
 
Innards I could not see, 
For the night had fallen 
And the crickets shrilled on all sides  
In waves, as if the grassleaves  
Shrieked by hillsides 
As they grew, and the stars 
Made small flashes in the sky, 
Like mica flashing in rocks 
 
On the chokecherried Ledge 
Where bees I stepped on once 
Hit us from behind like a shotgun,  
And where we could see  
Windowpanes in Freedom flash  
And Loon Lake and Winnipesaukee  
Flash in the sun 
And the blue world flashing. 

4  
The fingerprints of our eyeballs would zigzag 
On the sky; the clouds that came drifting up 
Our fingernails would drift into the thin air; 
In bed at night there was music if you listened, 
Of an old surf breaking far away in the blood. 
 
Children who come by chance on grass green for a man 
Can guess cow, dung, man, anything they want, 
To them it is the same. To us who knew him as he was 
After the beginning and before the end, it is green 
For a name called out of the confusions of the earth -—
 
Winnipesaukee coined like a moon, a bullcalf 
Dragged from the darkness where it breaks up again, 
Larks which long since have crashed for good in the grass 
To which we fed the flies, buzzing ourselves like flies, 
While the crickets shrilled beyond us, in July. 
 
The mind may sort it out and give it names -- 
When a man dies he dies trying to say without slurring 
The abruptly decaying sounds. It is true 
That only flesh dies, and spirit flowers without stop 
For men, cows, dung, for all dead things; and it is good, yes —  

But an incarnation is in particular flesh 
And the dust that is swirled into a shape 
And crumbles and is swirled again had but one shape 
That was this man. When he is dead the grass 
Heals what he suffered, but he remains dead, 
And the few who loved him know this until they die. 
 
For my brother, 1925-1957