With fruits and berries, ripe and soft and red.

He rubbed the dark wet plums against their lips.

He smeared the juices on their locked white teeth;

Pleading with little murmurs, while the stars

Wheeled overhead, and velvet-footed beasts

Approached and stared with eyes of gold and green;

And even the little leaves were all alive;

And tree-toads chirruped; but those dark forms lay still.

Day followed night. He did not know them now.

All that had been so swift to answer him