The Musicker, Flash Flood, Utah, 20 January 2017

I represented the unrepresentable.

I was not the unrepresentable itself.
I struggled to translate an early instance
Of an old tradition: "I want to be quiet
And live in the woods. I want to be quietly
Gone." Back then, even then, the woods
Themselves already were more and more gone.
The notion of poets and sages wandering
Away from the stink of the villages and towns
Was already quaint while the priests were still
Copying exercises involving myths of conquering
Nature monsters of the mountains. The real
People most likely to be found in the woods
Were the remnants of indigenes, plus bandits,
Wood cutters, and, then as now, the poor.
The poets writing about wandering were not often
Far from begging among the madding crowd. It's hard
To translate them seriously, properly, now, impossible
To represent them, then, so much later and less
Forest since. The more likely interpretation
Of what seemed like a somber dream of retreat
Is that the wheezy little fat man breathed alone,
Not because he had any hope of a contemplative life
But because, if he had neighbors, they might
Do him an injury. But that, too, is unrepresentable.
"To see sharp and be natural are for me but minor
Terrors." I tried to turn this into some verse
A little more noble but strayed into yet another
Poor paraphrase: Death's hammer breaks illusions.
Death's hammer breaks! The loveliest song that ever was.