The Burnt-out Spa

An old beast ended in this place:

A monster of wood and rusty teeth.

Fire smelted his eyes to lumps

Of pale blue vitreous stuff, opaque

As resin drops oozed from pine bark.

The rafters and struts of his body wear

Their char of karakul still. I can't tell

How long his carcass had foundered under

The rubbish of summers, the black-leaved falls.

Now little weeds insinuate

Soft suede tongues between his bones.

His armorplate, his toppled stones

Are an esplanade for crickets.

I pick and pry like a doctor or

Archæologist among

Iron entrails, enameled bowl,

The coils and pipes that made him run.

The small dell eats what ate it once.

And yet the ichor of the spring

Proceeds clear as it ever did

From the broken throat, that marshy lip.

It flows off below the green and white

Balustrade of a sag-backed bridge.

Leaning over, I encounter one

Blue and improbable person

Framed in a basketwork of cattails.

O she is gracious and austere,

Seated beneath the toneless water!

It is not I, it is not I.

No animal spoils on her green doorstep.

And we shall never enter there

Where the durable ones keep house.

The stream that hustles us

Neither nourishes nor heals.