I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root; br It is what you fear. br I do not fear it: I have been there. br br Is it the sea you hear in me, br Its dissatisfactions? br Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? br br Love is a shadow. br How you lie and cry after it. br Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. br br All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously, br Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, br Echoing, echoing. br br Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? br This is rain now, the big hush. br And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic. br br I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. br Scorched to the root br My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires. br br Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. br A wind of such violence br Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. br br The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me br Cruelly, being barren. br Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. br br I let her go. I let her go br Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. br How your bad dreams possess and endow me. br br I am inhabited by a cry. br Nightly it flaps out br Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. br br I am terrified by this dark thing br That sleeps in me; br All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. br br Clouds pass and disperse. br Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? br Is it for such I agitate my heart? br br I am incapable of more knowledge. br What is this, this face br So murderous in its strangle of branches?-- br br Its snaky acids kiss. br It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults br That kill, that kill, that kill.