from The Friary at Blossom, Prologue & Instructions

[ensenchiridion]

The pond-lilies are like little executions
over the water, the flat physical collars
of aristocrats and the cords that lunge
for the bottom. The yellow perch circling
the impeccable underneath of farewell, government
and mud in April.

The image of a horse diving into water
ignores the wild dogs up on the cliff,
their failure to join the horse and everything
in pursuit off the edge, passed by birds
and other flying things. This is like your decision
to continue with me out into the firm and steaming
pussy willows. We laugh.

Thomas Wyatt in the Tower was brought a pigeon
daily by a gray cat;
this supply saved him from starvation. But you
must imagine how it was for him, a poet,
in a stone room with blood and feathers on his
shirt and the gray cat on the prowl who pounced
in grass and who dragged it back
to this man who once dismantled flowers in his lap
and sang to women songs that were happy and sad.
I think he became that cat each morning
that springtime
out crawling for his breakfast in the grass; I think
the cat remained the cat, a poor prisoner to reaction

but very fast.