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On the Path,   
by this wet site   
of old fires -   
black ashes, black stones, where tramps   
must have squatted down,   
gnawing on stream water,   
unhouseling themselves on cursed bread,   
failing to get warm at a twigfire -   

I stop,   
gather wet wood, and for her,   
whose face   
I held in my hands   
a few hours, whom I gave back   
only to keep holding the space where she was,   

I light   
a small fire in the rain.   

The black   
wood reddens, the deathwatches inside   
begin running out of time, I can see   
the dead, crossed limbs   
longing again for the universe, I can hear   
in the wet wood the snap   
and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.   

The raindrops trying   
to put the fire out   
fall into it and are   
changed: the oath broken,   
the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken,
to be sworn again,  
over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,  
over and over, on earth.  

-Galway Kinnell 
© 1971 The Book of Nightmares