86

To Artemis

And if I write you letters on the wind

and bid them hunt there, witness of a tongue

seeking your elusive ear, who send

us stars to shine, on whom the moon is hung,

it is because your silver arrows spared

the fallow deer killed by your hunters, dark

in the wolf-haunted woods, the while you bared

your animal throat to their deadly mark.

Though the forest shrink, so does our emptiness

and the bestial heart; for you are there.

huntress, hunted, beautiful to bless

on the night sky, the peril of our prayer.