His enemy, the universe, surrounds him nightly with stars
going nowhere over the cold woods that has grown now,
with nightfall, totally dark, the stars deeper in the sky
than darkness; his thoughts go out alone into the winds
of the woods’ dark. He sits in the doorway and softly
plays the guitar; his fingers are stiff and heavy
and touch the strings, not dextrously, so that he plays
his own song, no true copy of a tune; sometimes the notes
go away from melody, form singly, and die out,
singly, in the hollow of the instrument, like single small
lights in the dark; his music has this passion,
that he plays as he can play. All day he has walked
in the woods with his gun, ruin of summer, iron-rust,
crumpled bronze, under the bare trees, devouring song. Now
the trees of darkness grow tall and wide; nobody’s
silence is in the woods. In the hush of all birds
who love light, he lets go free to die in the broad woods
in the dark the notes of his song.