He wasn’t going away when he went to the wood. He told himself that. They had broken the dime together. They had cut the heart on the tree. The jack-knife cut Two pinched half-circles of white on the green bark. The tree-gum bled from the cuts in sticky, clear drops, And there you were. And shortly the bark would dry Dead on the living wood and leave the white heart All through the winter, all through the rain and snow, A phantom-blaze to guide a tall phantom-hunter Who came in lightness along a leaf-buried path. All through the snowing winter it would be white. It would take many springs to cover that white again. What have I done in idleness, in sweet idleness, What have I done to the forest? I have marked A tree to be my own with a jack-knife blade In idleness, in sweet idleness. I have loosed A dryad out of the tree to chain me with wild Grapevines and forest trailers forever and ever To the hider’s place, to the outcast house of the lost, And now, when I would be free, I am free no more.