Frog Crèche with the Swirl
Cruel Snaker, Snacker on Peat,
Splayer of Mosquitos and the Ocean's Water Freshener;
Tawny, husky, sprawling,
City of Sunken Boulders:
They tell me you are sickly and I believe them, for I have
smelled your tainted liquor over the torrents drowning the
farmhouses.
And they tell me your music trickles and I answer: Yes it is
true I have heard the crickets shrill and winter and spring free shrill again.
And they tell me you are profligate and my reply is: On the
puddles of toads and tadpoles I have seen eggs go
to waste.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
leer at this unowned swamp, and I give them the leer and
say to them:
Come and show me another bog with weighted reeds waving so
proud to be green and tan and brown and lithe.
Flinging organic curses amid the insects rain-hatched in dirt,
here is a deep bold pool set vivid against the asphalt hard
cities;
Calm as a cat with tongue lapping milk, innocent as a
vole pitted against the otter,
Flowerheaded,
Groveling,
Mediating,
Emerging,
Drying, wetting, freezing,
Under the clouds, pollen all over mouth, laughing with
brown trees,
Under the great lightness of nihil laughing as a young
squirrel laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant vulture laughs who has never
missed a carcass,
Wagging and laughing that under roots are the capillaries, and
under grasses the heart of the land,
Laughing!
Laughing the tawny, husky, sprawling laughter of Immanence,
naked, porous, proud to be Frog Crèche, Cruel
Snaker, Snacker on Peat, Splayer of Mosquitos and
Water Freshener to the Ocean.
--
Thank you to Carl Sandburg for Chicago.