XIV
The road curling into
a rosy pastel horizon;
blackbird above,
quest forever strayed.
XV
As a man leaning out
from another is a sin,
and as the sin is an
occasion of celebration,
if blackbird's by the windowsill.
XVI
A wind broke out
from morn to eve,
from eve to morn;
yet with the leaves torn
I heard only flaps.
XVII
Giraffes jumped onto one another,
monkeys with fuss and panthers with
a massacre -- lions were cannibals,
yet the blackbird needed not the ark.
XVIII
For those of us who still read:
Beyond the twenty mountains
which did not move today
moved a blackbird.
XIX
As she decides for the third time,
As the clocks point to the voyage,
As the road is still worn at places,
As the occult still emancipates fear:
She refuses to pick partners --
for there'll always be the blackbird.
XXI
When the day is cold and the night gets colder,
When you know that you'd rather silently grow older,
Toots the blackbird: The words you always hear
"Grass grows green.": a moment away from the bier.
XXII
Blackbird, too, falls
yet 'tis the common
courtesy of muses.
XXIII
Your hair and eyes are
better off not existing,
for it allures all the gaze away
from the blackbird.
And the blackbird is jealous.
XXIV
To crown the perception with thought:
Human acuity.
To tread into dewy winter air, unspotted:
Blackbird promiscuity.
XXV
A universe of him is still a universe.
A universe of her is still a universe.
A universe of them is still a universe.
A universe with them and the blackbird:
that just might lie somewhere farther.
XXVI
entangled
he says
entangled to the blood
are the lips
and the hands
and entangled must be
the lips and the hands
too
falls a blackbird
unentangled.
XXVII
A sound far away
amid two oceans:
Asks of the daily routine --
what good are routines
when the blackbird sings
whenever he wishes?
XXVIII
Here's a problem
blackbird never had:
what would
adam and eve do
if genitals didn't fit?
XXXIX
For we still rejoice
a good story under the sycamores,
dozed off by the midday sun;
and for the song of the blackbird
is still a story worth hearing
we live.
XXX
A busy spring afternoon
by the sea -- no glare,
no fire and no flare:
blackbird winds by the city:
oracle of a love that
never yet was
but sure will be.
