(for a while, it was good to have been Man)

After eight thousand years among the stars,

A sudden wistfulness for August

Tugged me—like guilt—through half a cosmos

Back to a planet sweet as canebrake,

Where winds have plumes and plumes have throats,

Where pictures

Like “blue” and “south” can break your heart with sweet suggestiveness.

After a mere eight flickers, nothing changed there

Among the birds, still just as blazing,

Among the rain of leaves on rivers,

The heartbreak of the south and blue,

The canebrake-sweet of August night;

But only

The people changed, my people, oh my people, my

forgetters.

“After eight cycles, how is this you greet me?

Where is my horse? Where is my harp?

Why are the drums of goat-skin silent?

Spin my abyss of resin-wine;

Drape me my cloak of prophecy;

My name is …”

And then I said the true and lost and terrifying word.