no one regrets

emerging from the freighted dark no thought

but that the sky be clear and hands be filled

with all the needful that your warm hearts willed

when in good daylight the first words were caught

by eager listeners who had been taught

that not all prizes went to those best drilled

in the arcana of the freshly-killed

rather to ones who would account for naught

there is a victory that no one regrets

up in the hills when all the gifts are due

then hunters call and do not comprehend

the plainer meanings and the open sets

though when we have been silenced and review

our final forces we find there’s no end