‘Where man is not nature is barren’
(William Blake, Proverbs of Hell)

Everything seems to have
more room to breathe
without us.

To be more relaxed,
as if it had conspired
at once to increase
and to confine
our alien anxiety.

Outside is remarkably
more vivid like
a painting of things
which one can
walk through, but
not the things themselves.

Everything sinks back
into its ancientness,
which we have never
known; hedges no
more so than artifacts.

Houses which have
built themselves
through men in order
to banish men
inside themselves.

Trees which the
birds have dreamt
in flight that they
mind find roosts
upon awakening.

Roads which have
paved themselves
through men in order
to bear men away
round bends to the
horizons which they
open upon perspective.

Exulting in the hostility
of the chill
March evening,
I hasten back within
to infinite psychic
passages of warmth
and cosseted possible
recall and reassembly

in lonely silent words
which sing
in unison with the
abandoned places.

Amidst invisible trouble
and hidden violation,
all is at surface peace
of palpable linkage.

My nightmares will be
of threatened people,
but my quiet fantasies
of less interrupted flight,
more uninhibited winds,
less perturbed underwater
swimming through rivers,
streams and oceans.

Everything was once
at war without us.
But now that we are not,
it seems that nature’s barren
bears us rightfully.