weak with exams

This morning I saw a funeral procession pass
flanked by cop cars blue
with lights and sirens I was late to class
hot with impatience while the little flags
whipped on the hearses

The rain froze to flat sheets
last night, now the clouds are thin;
the earth clenches itself tight
thin grass in tongues of ice.

all day my breath smoked out my nostrils
as if I were a bull in a dream.
I strike match after match on frozen moss hard as horn
on a flint street fringed with rigid ash.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/poems-3-e.html

I saw a crayfish once
out in the cold water old
armored arc in my hand and with eyes
like to pinpricks in size
hapless spiny thing alert in air that steamed
after a cold steel-and-nettle rain
older than I and small
without idea of mercy

high above my head
poplars with their serpent limbs curve slow
spreading leaves as they go