Young Man

I seemed always standing
before a door
to which I had no key,
although I knew it hid behind it
a gift for me.

Until one day I closed
my eyes a moment, stretched
then looked once more.
And not surprised, I did not mind it
when the hinges creaked
and, smiling, Death
held out his hands to me.

-- John Haines --

This Dark Water

Reading in another man's book,
of voyages in a tropic sea
and strange thoughts
under the green silence
of an equatorial forest,
I found this passage:

"You, in the hard and bitter
north, on the exposed summit
of the world where Polaris
glitters in the forehead of a
frozen god . . ."

And it spoke to me of ourselves
here in the vast, lonely
twilight of Alaska
with the rumors of war steadily
pulsing against the hillside.

The friends we have
are few and distant,
their words reach us through
the onrushing season
like the hurried sentences
of those about to depart.

Appalling shadows grope
among the trees outside.
A nameless animal
crawls through the grass
to stand on hairy legs
and stare unblinking
through the window.

We have drawn in the flesh
against our bones
and gripped to our hearts
the warmth of our
troubled companionship.

It is as if we had been
sitting here for years, in a house
like a vessel bound outward
on the yellow tide of dusk,
with the helmsman asleep
and the sightless crew
staring ahead into nothing --
this dark water
that closes over our heads.

-- John Haines --

Horns

I went to the edge of the wood
in the color of evening,
and rubbed with a piece of horn
against a tree,
believing the great, dark moose
would come, his eyes
on fire with the moon.
.
I fell asleep in an old white tent.
The October moon rose,
and down a wide, frozen stream
the moose came roaring,
hoarse with rage and desire.
.
I awoke and stood in the cold
as  he slowly circled the camp.
His horns exploded in the brush
with dry trees cracking
and falling; his nostrils flared
as, swollen-necked, smelling
of challenge, he stalked by me.
.
I called him back, and he came
and stood in the shadow
not far away, and gently rubbed
his horns against the icy willows.
I heard him breathing softly.
Then with a faint sigh of warning
Soundlessly he walked away.
.
I stood there in the moonlight,
and the darkness and silence
surged back, flowing around me,
full of wild enchantment,
as though a god had spoken.

-- John Haines --