By Keith Waldrop, from a manuscript in progress. Waldrop has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems (Omnidawn) appeared last year.

what do we
know of what animals know
or how animals

know what they know

we may have
overestimated, my Soul, the

world of evil

even as I
write, what is written

leaves words behind

how refuse
to engage in, comply with, to