Built a river. Built the masses of a river. Among the bassy floors of the plain I walked—walked along the wild extent of branch and bramble, over the thickened trickles that link the larger groves. In the furrows they axed for themselves, the broken parts of branch or bramble—my fault—were caught; but at first the trickles can’t move them on. Now, these lengths, being borne together at length (rainfall helps), agree among themselves—find their points of concord—rustling, resting arms in a sinuous link. And soon they make rough-skinned bales—easing slowly down the trickleway—and soon they are thrown, of a sudden, dry, into the breathless bed of the work to come.
The digging being done, the lining spreads apace, its barbs pushed into the tempered base—the full is swiftly advancing up through a point far off in the view. Incidentals help. The sky, a spread of gassy fans lowing and pulling, will aid by pouring forth its weight. The leaves meanwhile execute neat moves, breasts out, and single legs stretched, climbing down each point of the air to each point of the stony bed-thorns. Here, between the hawwed ranks, the river begins—it makes a face. Skinned, pored, open-lunged, open-mouthed: born to a mask of arching wood, it gasps naked otherwise. it waits for its blood in the advent of water; as the rush comes, the cups of its thorny pores are rung. The final condition, river’s-sound, is fulfilled—a bare ditch becomes a subtle field of bells.
-2001
