The Killer

The day was clear as fire,

the birds sang frail as glass,

when thirsty I came to the creek

and fell by its side in the grass.

My breast on the bright moss

and shower-embroidered weeds,

my lips to the live water

I saw him turn in the reeds.

Black horror sprang from the dark

in a violent birth,

and through its cloth of grass

I felt the clutch of earth.

O beat him into the ground.

O strike him till he dies-

or else your life itself

drains through those colourless eyes.

I struck again and again

Slender in black and red

he lies, and his icy glance

turns outward clear and dead.

But nimble my enemy

as water is, or wind.

He has slipped from his death aside

and vanished into my mind

He has vanished whence he came,

my nimble enemy;

and the ants come out to the snake

and drink at his shallow eye.