Wilderness
There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes. . . a red
tongue for raw meat. . . and the hot lapping of blood-I keep
this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness
will not let it go.
There is a fox in me. . . a silver-gray fox. . . I sniff and guess. . . I
pick things out of the wind and air. . . I nose in the dark night
and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers. . . I circle
and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly. . . a machinery for
eating and grunting. . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the
sun-I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will
not let it go.
There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt—blue water—
gates. . . I scurried with shoals of herring. . . I blew waterspouts
with porpoises. . . before land was. . . before the water went
down. . . before Noah. . . before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed. . . dog-faced. . .
yawping a galoot’s hunger. . . hairy under the armpits. . . here
are the hawk-eyed hankering men. . . here are the blonde and
blue-eyed women. . . here they hide curled asleep waiting. . .
ready to snarl and kill. .. ready to sing and give milk.. .
waiting-1 keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird. . . and the eagle flies
among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the
Sierra crags of what I want. . . and the mockingbird warbles in
the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the under–
brush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark
foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mocking–
bird from the wilderness.
0, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony
head, under my red-valve heart-and I got something else: it is
a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother
and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God–
Knows-Where-For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and
no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from
the wilderness.
