James Dickey

      THE GAME

In the world, or behind the world,
my child nearby is concealed:
Among the high, free-ranging plants
At the edge of the bluff,
Or, on the red stone-crop below,
Dead, immortally hidden from view.
A cloud comes over;
Seeking a child within leaves

Or a child whose home is the cloud,
I feel the sun strongly divide
Into life and death.
Lightly, at the change, someone laughs.
More charged than this wind not to speak,
Lest he fall from his life on the sound
Of my voice, I come,
Drawn into his waiting game.



(Poetry, July 1959)