They will soon be down







To one, but he still will be



For a little while still will be stopping







The flakes in the air with a look,



Surrounding himself with the silence



Of whitening snarls. Let him eat



The last red meal of the condemned







To extinction, tearing the guts







From an elk. Yet that is not enough



For me. I would have him eat







The heart, and from it, have an idea



Stream into his gnarling head



That he no longer has a thing



To lose, and so can walk







Out into the open, in the full







Pale of the sub-Arctic sun



Where a single spruce tree is dying







Higher and higher. Let him climb it



With all his meanness and strength.



Lord, we have come to the end



Of this kind of vision of heaven,







As the sky breaks open







Its fans around him and shimmers



And into its northern gates he rises







Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel



With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach



Looking straight into the eternal



Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all







My way: at the top of that tree I place







The New World’s last eagle



Hunched in mangy feathers giving







Up on the theory of flight.



Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate



To the death in the rotten branches,



Let the tree sway and burst into flame







And mingle them, crackling with feathers,







In crownfire. Let something come



Of it something gigantic legendary







Rise beyond reason over hills



Of ice screaming that it cannot die,



That it has come back, this time



On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:







That it will hover, made purely of northern







Lights, at dusk and fall



On men building roads: will perch







On the moose’s horn like a falcon



Riding into battle into holy war against



Screaming railroad crews: will pull



Whole traplines like fibres from the snow







In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.







But, small, filthy, unwinged,



You will soon be crouching







Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion



Of being the last, but none of how much



Your unnoticed going will mean:



How much the timid poem needs







The mindless explosion of your rage,







The glutton’s internal fire the elk’s



Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,







The pact of the “blind swallowing



Thing,” with himself, to eat



The world, and not to be driven off it



Until it is gone, even if it takes







Forever. I take you as you are







And make of you what I will,



Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty







Non-survivor.



Lord, let me die but not die



Out.





