Crescent moons curve this way,
then that way. What does it prove?
Not, as I once thought, that this one waxes,
that one wanes. Instead the outer curve
of a crescent moon shows where the sun is.
Why wasn’t that obvious? The whole
moon is there whether I can see it
or not. The moon is never what it seems.
Not circle nor crescent nor bowl.
Instead the moon is a sphere in orbit
about the earth, a constant spirit
tugging at our seas, pretending to be
rabbit or frog, boy or girl,
buffalo, dragon, oyster or pearl.
Essay
by Hayden Carruth
So many poems about the deaths of animals.
Wilbur’s toad, Kinnell’s porcupine, Eberhart’s squirrel,
and that poem by someone — Hecht? Merrill? —
about cremating a woodchuck. But mostly
I remember the outrageous number of them,
as if every poet, I too, had written at least
one animal elegy; with the result that today
when I came to a good enough poem by Edwin Brock
about finding a dead fox at the edge of the sea
I could not respond; as if permanent shock
had deadened me. And then after a moment
I began to give way to sorrow (watching myself
sorrowlessly the while), not merely because
part of my being had been violated and annulled,
but because all these many poems over the years
have been necessary — suitable and correct. This
has been the time of the finishing off of the animals.
They are going away — their fur and their wild eyes,
their voices. Deer leap and leap in front
of the screaming snowmobiles until they leap
out of existence. Hawks circle once or twice
above their shattered nests and then they climb
to the stars. I have lived with them fifty years,
we have lived with them fifty million years,
and now they are going, almost gone. I don’t know
if the animals are capable of reproach.
But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye.
