The hare escapes the hunter with his gun
and shrieks it to the gorge’s lowering cloud.
The rain traces it deep in autumn mud
and then the elm leaf reads it, drifting down.
The lonely mother drinks it from the gush
of hidden springs. The song of the man on the run.
The lizard’s prayer in the pouring down of sun.
The trout, leaping, begs it of heaven and river’s rush.
The beggar utters it with outstretched hands,
and the translator, choosing she will rhyme,
the writer, slave to language, rapt in dream.
The holm-oak shrieks it as the lightning wounds,
sun, moon, grasshopper say it, time after time:
in the face of fear, the only truth’s a scream.