A song in a windless night...
-The moon plates in metal bright
The cut-out images of dark green.
...A song; sudden as an echo, quick,
Buried, there, under the thick
Clump. It stops. Come, it's there, unseen...
-A toad! -There in shadow. Why this terror
Near me, your faithful soldier? -Spring!-
Look at him, poet clipped, no wing,
Nightingale of the mud...Horror!-
He sings. Horror!--Horror! But why?
Don't you you see that eye of light, his own?
No: he goes, chilled beneath his stone.
Good night. That toad you heard is I.
-tr. Vernon Watkins