In Wild Kingdom he goes in search of the primordialface behind the civilized mask, the place where "wolfpacks of nothingnessstalk / the signature stinks and blood trails of man." He doesn't have farto travel. Whether his subject is the "ancient terror" of marriage, in"Prothalamion," or a northwester "glittering with malice" in "The Lump,"Seshadri seems peculiarly subject to powers both old and inexorable. "Allthis was the brainchild of water," as the lost hiker of "Lifeline"realizes, and throughout Wild Kingdom groundwater rises in crevices,polar icecaps melt, and rain wears its passage through rock. Nature here isas pervasive as myth, and just as annihilating.