Of Ants that Dig for Gold
You have seen ants in the grass, held one on your finger.
You have watched them weave and unweave their tickling footsteps,
study their path with their horns, or manhandle a seed.
And you were pleased with the fiddliness of their concerns,
the fumbled meetings and stalk-clinging. It seemed to you
like a smallness of your own you had stepped away from.
But this is a place where the ants are as big as dogs,
and yet like those you know they are busy with the earth,
which is of gold here, loose hills of it mingled with dirt.
All day long they crawl over the scree, worrying out
the nuggets and letting them roll away down the slope,
then gathering them into scabby heaps of glitter.
Who knows what they want with gold? They will fight to keep it,
and everyone is afraid of their pincering jaws,
so if you want to enrich yourself you must trick them,
using a mare and two clay pots, hung so she drags them
with their mouths clunking along the ground towards the ants,
which cannot see a hole without putting gold in it.
Then lead her foal as close as you dare to call her back
with her two pots behind her, shaking out raw money,
the earth’s shiny droppings. Is this what you are after?
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