Behind his eyes are frogs he’s watched mating
motionless for hours in the pond-water,
him tense on the unsteady bed, waiting
to disengage from the wood-cutter’s daughter.
Her mouth, open, tastes of sleep and oatmeal,
her body, astonished, does things that they
have dreamt, while through the window waits the real
forest and the untransfigured day.
Is it our climate or our cold religion
forbids our native animals to try
how once they entered the human condition,
or girls the classical epiphany?