WYOMING
Who can believe in those plains
Without which the birds
Spurt right and left,
Themselves stupefied. Where
Across the spirit-level
Nothing goes,
You say, nothing moving across nothing.
Try catching that now.
Try thinking calmly and solely
Of the leafless tree, without
Its splinters, without the cracks
It lends the sky
Like ceiling-plaster,
Without the great girdle
Of birds above,
Its flexing, narrowing loop?
© 2009
Salt Publishing Limited