“The wind, the birds,
do not sound poorer but clearer,
recalling our agony, and the way we danced.”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)