A Hare’s Ear

A bone of cloud lain in the valley
of its begetting, a tumulus of souls,
laying the car on that and then under it, to emerge
to sun shining in a hare’s ear blowing dead
on the tar, and swaying the hips of the car

into the night, and the hurrying
stars there, and arriving with the road still
thrumming in the blood, to the sudden
abruption of the day, the quiet spar
of milkwood creaking on the roof, night

birds bleating as if over Egypt, all
of a piece of pilgrimage, the mosque bush
and the steady sea sifted in it, and
sleep, with countless fallings, the world
as integer, tallied and kept and one.