Slow Smoke/Colloquy with a Coyote

by Lew Sarett

COLLOQUY WITH A COYOTE Ki-yoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!

Speak now, O coyote, rumped upon the knoll!
    Into the bowl of desert night—
  Clinking and cool with stars—oh, roll
    The melancholy of your soul.
  When sentimental with the moon, you cry
   Your longing to the lady in the sky,
 Know that you do not grieve for her, alone,
 That your deep yearning, sprung from blight
   Of solitude, is tallied by my own.
   Speak then, O coyote, speak for me;
   With your seductive melody cajole
 The lovely one to be more intimate, invite
  Her to linger for a moment of delight.
   The virgin, you, and I—we three
On such a night should be more neighborly.

In the homeland whence I came, a solitude
 Dark with its regiments of lancing pine
 That march from peak to water-line,
 I knew another spokesman for my mood—
  Oh, he was suave, ingratiating, shrewd!
 When balsams muffled their voices in the cowl
   Of sable dusk, and tranquil, cool,
   The beaver-pond was but a chip
   Of silver, soundless, save for the flip
 Of a beaver's tail, the flapping of an owl—
     On such a night as this,
    When the silver-lady put a kiss
    Upon the bosom of the pool,
  The gibbering loon, disconsolate, forlorn,
    Flinging upon the sky a rain
  Of silver tones, the tremolo of pain—
  Would always gain her ear and mourn
   For me, befriend me; ah, the loon
And I!—we had an understanding with the moon.

Speak then, O desert coyote, speak for me now.
Be to me kinsman in this valley of the dead,
  This waste so unfamiliar, so dispirited.
  Among the buffalo-skulls upon the brow
  Of yonder butte, fling back your head,
And stabbing moonward with your wail, impart
 Our sorrow till it breaks the vestal's heart;
 Tell the indifferent one that she is beautiful,
   As lovely and as cool
  As a peeled willow bough;
Request the lady to leave off her gown
Of clouds, and ask her to come down . . .

Ki-yoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!