Two poems about the barbed ineffable

This is quickly becoming the day of posting things I like. Don't blame me for having heart, reader. So, for your sympathy or amusement, a Babstock and a Millay.

Ken Babstock - "Carrying Someone Else's Infant Past a Cow in a Field near Marmora, Ont."

Summer gnats colonized her molasses black eyes, her flicking,

conical ears. She moaned, a badly tuned

tuba, and tassels of ick dripped

from her black-

on-pink nostrils like strings of weed sap. Waking from a rhythmic

nap in my arm, you wobbled your head upright

and stared at the great hanging skin-

bag, teats, dry-docked

hull of her ribs, anvil head, and the chocolate calm in her eyes

that gazed back as I carried you closer, wading

through goldenrod, mulleins, thistle

all artfully bent

clear of your soft exposed feet. Ants worried the punky

tops of knotted fence posts, and caution flags

of gossamer and milkweed fluff

marked each rust-twist

of barb, but that was all that divided you and her. I felt briefly

happy to be prop, peripheral in this exchange,

this unfolding bundle of knowing that

was you in

an overgrown ditch where the air swelled, shaking itself dry

in the sumac. What was I shown that I haven't retained?

What peered back long before the cracked

bell of its name

came sounding off a tongue's hammer and fenced it forever? Know

that it happened, though - you were a drooling lump

of living in the verdant riddle. That heifer

remembers

nothing of you. Let chicory, later in life, be bothersome blue

asterisks footnoting one empty, unrecoverable

hour of your early and

strange.

Edna St. Vincent Millay - "Assault"

I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not so have ventured forth alone

At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

[I hope this isn't copyright infringement; with authors duly credited, if you find fault with this, kindly go suck an egg.]