Eight Deer

 

 

Where dusk and road’s-end meet at close of day,

When most my inner eye is charged with seeing

To looking after thoughts whose thought is fleeing,

So to laughing, pass me going the hearthbound way,

 I caught, and near,

With that other sight, when all eyes met, eight deer.

 

And I was honored proud for all of me

That they saw in one of so mean human bearing

A mind that gave their kind no cause to flee

But stay their gorse and hold my eyes in thrall,

As I held theirs (we said it wasn’t staring),

Though scant the other feet and strung barbed wire

In tall

Sere summer grass the all

That stood between us.

 

They, too, have been at their poetic labors,

A passing thought deigned passing by

Like you the deer do not

Fear being caught

They, too, in twilight’s fall hold dear the thought:

åGood fences make good neighbors.’

And thought of it so well I thought a sigh

Could not demean us.

 

All-youth they seemed, young bucks, their velvet drawn

On budding horns,

Which horny clarions, all velvet gone,

Would sound the coming of the antlered rack

On rack to sound the rutting morns,

To win the courtly does whose spots of faun

I should have said endearingly adorns

Each fauning back

But for these days, and seen them dappled on.

 

And I, like they, would glad have stayed my stay

And held their eyes in mine with twilight falling,

No eyes at other road’s-end so enthralling

As to call me back at once this close of day;

But knowing balance best is held with motion

I feared to break the spell—

I knew too well

That earth and sky and ocean

Could not stay,

Without that spinning poised them by its calling.

 

No furtive sidelong glance had I in passing,

Sixteen candid eyes met mine full face,

Attending so straightforwardly my pace,

I could not think when I was more amassing

Of pure ingenuous insight of my being.

Since when in gazing on

Those things bygone

I ache of seeing

My own hindsight as clear,

And, frankly looked upon,

Most as touching as the eve I saw eight deer.