Idiot

The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes,

The meadow creeps implacable and still;

A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies.

One two three the cows bulge on the hill.

Motion that is not time erects snowdrifts

While sister's hand sieves waterfalls of lace.

With a palm fan closer than death he lifts

The Ozarks and tilted seas across his face.

In the long sunset where impatient sound

Strips niggers to a multiple of backs

Flies yield their heat, magnolias drench the ground

With Appomattox! The shadows lie in stacks.

The julep glass weaves echoes in Jim's kinks

While ashy Jim puts murmurs in the day;

Now in the idiot's heart a chamber stinks

Of dead asters, as the potter's field of May.

All evening the marsh is a slick pool

Where dream wild hares, witch hazel, pretty girls.

"Up from the important picnic of a fool

Those rotted asters!" Eddy on eddy swirls

The innocent mansion of a panthers heart!

It crumbles, tick-tick time drags it in

Till now his arteries lag and now they start

Reverence with the frigid gusts of sin.

The stillness pelts the eye, assaults the hair;

A beech sticks out a branch to warn the stars,

A lightening-bug jerks angles in the air,

Diving. "I am the captain of new wars!"

The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail;

Far off a precise whistle is escheat

To the dark; and then the towering weak and pale

Covers his eyes with memory like a sheet.