for W.D. Snodgrass

The barbed-wire fences rust 
As their cedar uprights blacken 
After a night of rain. 
Some early, innocent lust 
Gets me outdoors to smell 
The teasle, the pelted bracken, 
The cold, mossed-over well, 
Rank with its iron chain, 

And takes me off for a stroll. 
Wetness has taken over. 
From drain and creeper twine 
It’s runnelled and trenched and edged 
A pebbled serpentine 
Secretly, as though pledged 
To attain a difficult goal 
And join some important river. 

The air is a smear of ashes 
With a cool taste of coins. 
Stiff among misty washes, 
The trees are as black as wicks, 
Silent, detached and old. 
A pallor undermines 
Some damp and swollen sticks. 
The woods are rich with mould. 

How even and pure this light! 
All things stand on their own, 
Equal and shadowless, 
In a world gone pale and neuter, 
Yet riddled with fresh delight. 
The heart of every stone 
Conceals a toad, and the grass 
Shines with a douse of pewter. 

Somewhere a branch rustles 
With the life of squirrels or birds, 
Some life that is quick and right. 
This queer, delicious bareness, 
This plain, uniform light, 
In which both elms and thistles, 
Grass, boulders, even words, 
Speak for a Spartan fairness, 

Might, as I think it over, 
Speak in a form of signs, 
If only one could know 
All of its hidden tricks, 
Saying that I must go 
With a cool taste of coins 
To join some important river, 
Some damp and swollen Styx. 

Yet what puzzles me the most 
Is my unwavering taste 
For these dim, weathery ghosts, 
And how, from the very first, 
An early, innocent lust 
Delighted in such wastes, 
Sought with a reckless thirst 
A light so pure and just.