Maxwell Bodenheim Poems : Rattlesnake Mountain Dialogue

RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN
Every night the sky grips my shoulder, in pain.
The cows upon my slope
Attack their blades of grass with less decision.
The boulders reaching in to form my ribs,
Are touched by evening dizziness, to dust,
And lose their fierce pretence of hardness.
Three crows in a row
Search for clearer tongues, with steady discords.

MAN
The nervous dissolution
Which men call beauty stands
Sternly watching itself.

RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN
Evening, staggering under dead men's tongues,
Makes light of my loneliness.
He comes like a madman dissolved
Into unbearable quietness.
But, drinking my vigorous muteness,
He melts into that stream of seeking motion
Which men call morning.

MAN
You teach him to make his recompense
A solitary unfolding
Walking perilously
Between the scowls of life and death.

RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN
When he goes he is something more than himself.
He holds a lean alertness
That, green as any leaf,
Takes the flutterings of life, unperturbed.

MAN
Beauty is a proud stare
Challenging all things to remove
Their inattentive clamours:
And some things bow abruptly,
Timidly stroking their untouched skins.

RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN
And thus evening bows into morning.