Classic Poem

On stones mossed with hot dust, no shade but the thin, useless shadows of roadside grasses;
into the wood's gloom, staring back at the blue flowers on stalks thin as threads.

The green slime—a thicket of young trees standing in brown water;
with knobs like muscles, a naked tree stretches up,
dead; and a dead duck, head sunk in the water as if diving.

The tide is out. Only a pool is left on the creek's stinking mud.
Someone has thrown a washboiler away.
On the bank a heap of cans;
rats, covered with rust, creep in and out.
The white edges of the clouds like veining in a stone.