.

A disused barn catches

fire in the night. Now

the farmer is watching.

The fire is white like a dream

of fire, an approximate dream.

The farmer has an instinct

that fire, all fire, issues from within—

it leaks out. It is a leak.

Little flecks of it break loose,

then they’ve vanished.

More white fire leaks from the barn.

The danceplay of the flames

is an unrepeatable oath.

.

Today the village is dappled and fugitive,

like a foal, a thirsty foal,

or a cliff.

Everywhere the smell of water.

.

There are daughters all over the village. One captures a grasshopper,

another shims the short leg of the bed

with a coin,

a worn coin made of forgotten ore

from a distant empire.

One hangs laundry.

Someone has drawn faces on all the clothespins:

one of these faces looks ready to speak.

.

Through the evening she

listens to time passing.

She speaks, softly.

Many years ago, she speaks,

many years ago:

then she listens to her voice suddenly receding.

.

Now the doctor hears the breath of the fox

in the final moments before sleep.

In the morning he checks around the yard for fox tracks.

One night he hears the fox breathing from the foot

of the bed, but then already he’s asleep.

In the morning he checks the house for fox prints,

a stray fox hair.

Soon the fox seems to breathe onto his pillow as he sleeps.

In the morning he catches a blur of tail darting

about in the study from the corner of his eye.

He closes the door, turns its beautiful silver key.

He finds his stethoscope, holds it to the door, holds it for a long time to the door.

At last he begins searching the drawers

for his great-grandfather’s jade knife.

.

The doctor rides his horse along the outer contours of the village.

Soon it is night and he cannot see.

He gathers that his horse can see through this dark.

He can hear his horse breathing.

Soon he can hear something else too, the steps of a darting fox.

The fox darts all around the horse,

some kind of game.

Soon he wonders whether it’s a fox at all, or only the sound of his own breathing.

Soon he hears another sound—the breath of the fox.