The day is so long and white,
A road all dust,
Smooth monotony;
And the night at the end,
A hill to be climbed,
Slowly, laboriously,
While the stars prick our hands
Like thistles.

RAINY SEASON

A flock of parrakeets
Hurled itself through the mist;
Harsh wild green
And clamor-tongued
Through the dim white forest. 
They vanished,
And the lips of Silence
Sucked at the roots of Life.

MAIL ON THE RANCH

The old man on the mule
Opens the worn saddle bags,
And takes out the papers.

From the outer world
The thoughts come stabbing,
To taunt, baffle, and stir me to revolt. 
I beat against the sky,
Against the winds of the mountain,
But my cries, grown thin in all this space,
Are diluted with emptiness... 
Like the air,
Thin and wide,
Touching everything,
Touching nothing.

THE VAMPIRE BAT

What was it that came out of the night? 
What was it that went away in the night? 
The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner,
Eyes already glazing. 
How should she know what came out of the night,
Or what was taken away in the night? 
A shadow passed across the moon. 
The wind rustled in the mango trees. 
And now, in the morning,
The little brown hen is huddled in the fence corner,
Eyes already glazing;
Because a shadow passed across the moon,
And the wind rustled in the mango trees.

CONSERVATISM

The turkeys,
Like hoop-skirted old ladies
Out walking,
Display their solemn propriety.

A terrible force,
Hungry and destructive,
Emanates from their mistily blinking eyes.

LITTLE PIGS

Little tail quivering,
Wrinkled snout thrusting up the mud: 
He will find God
If he keeps on like that.

THE SILLY EWE

The silly ewe comes smelling up to me. 
Her tail wriggles without hinges,
Both ends of it at once and equal. 
Yesterday the parrot bit her;
Last week the jaguar ate her young one;
But experience teaches her nothing.

THE SNAKE

The chickens are at home in the barnyard,
The pigs in the swill,
And the flowers in the garden;
But where do you belong,
With your lacquered coils,
O snake?

THE YEAR