Hell's hunting hound surprised me in the dry grass
(and that instant I knew I should flee).
It waved with those heinous-lipped smiles
and those drooling, fool-wide eyes
and trotted up on friendship feet,
flapping, silly beast,
wagging and snorting and sneezing all the while.
I whiffed salmon and old dung;
its black coat happily half-threaded,
seamed up along twice-torn bite marks
and rivets driven deep,
ran all across with a child's stitching.

Hell's hound cracked its jaw
peered northward meekly
like to inhale the moss grown at that side of trees
and aimed a purr at my face,
and grinned.

Bastard beast! Foolish fiend!
Full wide I saw its gums caught up tight
like cotton all picked and packed
a hundred hundred thousand downy white feathers
clustered up tight around its ghouly snags
crammed thick in each crevice and dripping,
simply dripping fat with drool.
Gross and inestimable slave!
Braggart of your fancy feast,
soaked in it, stupid and slow!

I heaved myself away
but not ten yards forward West I saw in a cradle
set in a den among the blind rustles of wheat
the killed dove,
sad among the dying grass.

Shot midway out of the gloaming air,
I'd hope to assume.

I stopped to rest on a stone
and faced the empty skyline.
A wind bristle sought my cheek and itched me where I wanted, tousled my hair and ran like water into the crooks of my sitting knees.  Everywhere was rainless, autumn and earless, and very very still.

From the West then,
full blown the orchestra banged.
Black and sick it sneaked past!
thick lips agape and brutal head turned to me,
it shrugged in a careless, pleas'ed way,
then dumb as ever slumped away,
following the scarlet tympani
off to tangerine sunset.