On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody

Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body

I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:

To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given

Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,

The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.

To lift to leave from treasures of man is pleasing death

That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath

And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.

To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.

Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas

If I take to burn or return this world which is each man’s work.