Snake

For Charles, in a spirit of incandescent fury.

Can I confess how I liked you -
Turning under hand like a whiplash,
The strong heavy strike of you
With an angry gleam risen and the ghost of a hood.
Black snake. The good black snake.
Snake that devours other snakes.
Still startling to find under your hand
In the ruin of a crumbling half-wall –
But taut, muscled – good to the touch,
If furious.

(The snake’s hard coil –
I do not know
If I ever will have,
Or can.
But that pure ragged rage
I craved, though could not
In my utmost struggle
Catch.)

I want no clumsy log to cast at you;
No jealousy for that lord of the earth.
At bay the black-bead gleaming eyes were fixed
On the sunrise, and the body’s coil and strike
Carried eastward, a bolt of pure fury and conviction:
A straight black arrow from a sinewy bow.