To interpret the wood you first must fall
asleep in it, feel
its breathing lift your ribs, turn
owls out of a pocket
of fog, rub fur
in your groin and sense the hardening
of fingernails, of toenails
to horn. After that
communication’s easy. You may eavesdrop on the follies of citizens
of the other kingdom, preach
to birds. And when the fabulist
comes home, sleepwalking
the streets of a town
where his father flourished in the butcher’s act, he will suffer
them all, the solemn beasts — ox, magpie, lion,
and mad March hare; slipping
away at dusk to take his small wolf brothers
with fables, teaching them
to know — dreaming buckets
of thick sow’s blood — themselves transformed, turned skinside out, forgiven
the crimes they move to in their guise are men.