John Burnside. Creaturely
[from Black Cat Bone, 2011]
The only gift is knowing we belong
to nothing.
Midsummer's night
in the drunk tank, moon on the walls
and something like a fox scouting for mice
in the corner: shy
and auburn, it's the secret animal
I reckon from a childhood
resurrexit;
and why would there not
be weather, some
event like wind, or rain,
from thirty years ago?
The fox turns in the light with something slender
caught between its jaws and no one knows
for certain what it is: the one rule, here,
that no one leaves until the creaturely
in everything is sifted from his skin
to mark the cure, the rollright in the mind.
