One night, while the others slept and a strong wind
brushed out the long hair of the river willows,
he rode out on his horse to find the end.
He thought he knew it in those many pillows
he’d risen from, only to sleep again
night after night, or in the consolations
of vanishing in the touch of another’s skin,
in poetry, which defied interpretations,
even in the plain shadow of a stone,
the amber slant of sunlight at the sea—
only to find he was himself alone,
cast in a gospel or a tragedy.
As he rode to the edge of what he knew,
he saw beyond the hill a river, slow,
one minute shining, one a lucid blue.
The sun slept in the red eye of a crow.