There are wolf poems running through all of these books
that I'm reading from.
And I'm not going to start trying to explain
why there are wolf poems there.
For the first place, because I don't know.
But it would take a long time to explain that.
But here's-- this is just one of them.
And they seem to have cropped up at particular times in my life.
This one's called "A Hollow."
"Here, then, is where the wolf of summer lay,
heard flocks of sheep running by like rats' teeth on the paths,
heard them in the stubble like rain.
Listened to them pissing from their thin bones,
learned one by one the tone of each jaw grinding
its dry stalks, knew every cough and, by the cough, the throat.
Here lay with the roots around him like veins around the heart
and was the wolf of summer.
There were leaves that listened to him with their whole lives
and never felt the wind, while he lay there like darkness
in an ear and, hearing notes of wells,
knew where the moon was."