"I am a landscape," he said,

"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.

There are daunting cliffs there,

and plains glad in their way

5

of brown monotony. But especially

there are sinkholes, places

of sudden terror, of small circumference

and malevolent depths."

"I know," she said. "When I set forth

10

to walk in myself, as it might be

on a fine afternoon, forgetting,

sooner or later I come to where sedge

and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,

mark the bogland, and I know

15

there are quagmires there that can pull you

down, and sink you in bubbling mud."

"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,

a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot

on his head, if you happened

20

just to touch it he'd jump up yelping

and bite you. He bit a young child,

they had to take him to the vet's and destroy him."

"No one knows where it is," she said,

"and even by accident no one touches it:

25

It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way

preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,

sleeping on green moss of my own woods,

I myself without warning touch it,

and leap up at myself--"

30

"--or flinch back

just in time."

"Yes, we learn that

It's not terror, it's pain we're talking about:

those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,

35

that are bruised forever, that time

never assuages, never."