Is this tiny pond

The great lake in which

I swam as a boy?

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From "Haiku This Other World" by Richard Wright, p 140

He lifts his small hands

To god of nothingness,

Jagged legs stand

On pale green crutches.

The pear-shaped pod

Flanged for flight

All dainty lines

Except the head:

Except the triangle terrible as death.

Responding to his hands, I touched him once.

His minute mouth roared

In such a horror of silence that my eyes

Widened in a telescopic lens. I saw:

I saw his face grow large as mine

The tender spring-green blades of him

Thrust like vengeance. His vicious eyes

Glared. His mouth was red

As hell, the pointed face

Filled with knowledgeable malice.

His hands- O God, his hands

Came for me, crept for me, felt for me through the space

Of cosmic distances that make an inch.

Now that I am brittle as a twig

Time having squeezed the sap and wrung me dry

To the bone, to the outdistancing brain,

Being careful to be quiet and restrained

Would the terrible triangle of my face

Make him afraid?

Winter is icummen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm

Raineth drop and staineth slop,

And how the wind doth ramm!

    Sing: Goddamm!

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,

    Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm.

    So 'gainst the winter's balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,

Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

So worn with passing through the bars,

His gaze holds nothing any more.

A thousand bars before him there might loom

And past the thousand bars no world.

The lissom stride of soundless padded pacing,

Revolving in the tiniest of rings,

Is like a dance of strength around a pivot,

Impaling in a trance a mighty will.

But rarely is the curtain of the eyeball

Softly parted. Then an image enters in

Which seeps through the tremulous stillness of the limbs

To reach the heart, where it expires.