Through owning dogs we get to know the woods:

though not the woods our senses might distinguish

had the fear of dog not struck the neighbourhood,

those beasts that cannot mind their own business,

who scrum like Englishmen in a foreign ground

emptying stomachs and bowels in gutters,

who strut like gunslingers  through the Western town,

the good citizens pulling down the shutters.

So do the creatures of the earth and trees

cease to gather and chatter and become

a still life picture, a forest frieze,

as if nature, by its nature, were dumb.