Under power overhang of crags

fierce bird- love;

The monals mated, clawed and screamed;

The female Brown and non descript the mail was a king, a fire dream!

My barrel spoke one word of lead

the bird came down, the king was dead,

Or almost dying;

His eyes were glazed, the breast Still throbbed.

We tucked him pulsing as he was in our rucksack

The Female rose, in terror crying!

With bird - blood on our hands we walkedwalked

And as the skies broke into rags

Of Mist, why did our footsteps dragdrag?

The cumulus piled on the crags.

We smote the Pony on its shanks

To hurry him, around a bendband

He swiveled and went down the flank

Of Rock a thousand feet below

To Where the roaring river flowed.

His scream

Climbed up the gorgegorge, a nightmare fang

Which ploughed my blistered dreams and sowe

Begging children.

Depressed a bit we took the road;

Walking like ciphers disinterred

From some forgotten codecode.

Dusk caught up with us, and bears;

My terror- gun Spat at the shades

But missed each time

When Jackals howled, sniffing, ribs

Trembling she asked if there were wolves

I simply Held her hand in mine

And walked on further

To a cave hommed in by pine.

We would have missed

But for a growlingb bhotia dog

The resin tappers left behind

To guard their cans and beaded icho

Pimpling like a spray of cysts.

Just yards off an escarpment wrote

Hieroglyphs on a scroll of must.

And as she crumpled with a chill

I lit Fire on turf and peat

And rubbed her clotted sides and

And found her waking in my hands

(this Shadow- pair of quickening hand

Like embers in a shadow- net.

In the wet lanes of her bodybody

We apprehensive, met.

And as we Rose to the final killkill

-two electric saws meeting on a hill

In the narrowing bones of a fractured tree

Each of us thought the other was free

Of the ponies scream and the monal's wing

And the prowling bears in the firelight rim

Her head on my heartbeat, hair locked in my fingerfinger

She purred into sleep; the night seemed to flowerflower

Late with our dreams.

For the moon came out just for an hour or two

And the monal wings came feathering down

In a Passion of dusky gold and blue.

And the wolves, with the mist, went over the Cliff

-but for the wind we both would have dreamtdreamt

The very same dream of quiescence and love;

But the wind was a thorn in the flesh of the night

And moaned aloud like a witch in the flue.

I broke my gun in two across the back

Of an ash -grey Dawn. A brown bird left the cracks

Flying Strongly, and as its Shadow crossed us

It shrieked with fear and turned to stonestone

Dropped at our feet.

'It's the queen monal!_ we are a accursed!'; she saidsaid

"Just watch its Eyes!" for though the

bird

Was Near dead

It's eyes flared terror ike bits of dripping meat!