A Houyhnhnm's Scrapbook/Number 1/The Circle

Be-sunned and novembered
through autumn’s tinted glass,
the green memory of a withered field
dissolves into a stubbled sob
of cricket requiems.
The frogs make slack their basso strings
and lay aside their wide-eyed wonderments
to seek nirvana
in dark palaces of mud.
By day, a sob of wakened wind
breathes empathy with all about to die;
by night, a moon-howled hound laments …
while he and we careen through black-depthed seas of space,
riding this tainted agate of rock,
its space-blown crew talking of mutiny,
—while God sees to His charts.