Bernadette Hall

ACTAEON

He gives a little yelp of excitement when he sees her
walking quickly over the gravel track
across the boardwalk around the lagoon that’s called
Mimi Moto, the Little Pissing-hole.
He sees the hare spring up in the blackberry tangle,
how it leaps among the lupins and over
the tall grasses. He sees how the clouds drift,
the cloud-rack, cloud-burst, cloud-scape, cloudberry.
He’s in a cloud-castle, he’s in cloud-cuckoo-land.
He’s cloudy and cloudless, poor boy, and all
at the very same time so it must be love. And he whistles
to his dogs but they don’t know him anymore
and they take him for the hare, for he has seen her
naked and she’s set them onto him, his own dogs, poor boy.

Author’s Note

Sources

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