In bare country shorn of leaf,

By no remote sierra screened,

Where pauses in the wind are brief

As the remorses of a fiend,

The stark Laocoön this tree

Forms of its knotted arm and thigh

In snaky tussle with a sky

Whose hatred is eternity,

Through his white fronds that whirl and seethe

And in the groaning root he screws,

Makes heard the cry of all who breathe,

Repulsing and accusing still

The Enemy who shaped his thews

And is inherent to his will.

Curbed athlete hopeless of the palm,

If in the rising moon he hold,

Discobolos, a quoit of gold

Caught in his gusty sweep of arm,

Or if he loom against the dawn,

The circle where he takes his run

To hurl the discus of the sun

Is by his own dark shadow drawn:

The strict arena of his game

Whose endless effort is denied

More room for victory or pride

Than what he covers with his shame.