the searching of the starlings

1

Softly trembling -like the blood on the warm lips

That tastes still of the last kiss

The lovers sealed on their adieu, which drips

Benumb with peace their hurled abyss-

The garland of the dusk on leaves ink'd, sips

The starlings circumventing hiss

That swoops its darkening gloss on the trees

With blank flames enamelling the breeze. 

 

2 

The sky does wear its bridal veil: the blue

The day displayed for its attire

Unfurls its curls on puffs the plumed whirls drew,

Till in a soft, swings-cuddled spire,

The feathered dives the deafened winds subdue, 

And on the trees' earth-spawning lyre

The gleaning coals of fainting arcs are wedded

With peals that shreds of clouds have ebbed 

 

3

Now, cold: the city's night is cloaked with cold,

As from the starlings in the branches

Come no sparks to enshrine the stars with gold.

And when an overwhelmed leaf launches

The end of the extremes the perch'd frames hold,

With hunched, stoat-like twitches, it blushes

The throes on caskets' pillows pluck to meet

No rebirth from their defeat. 

 

4

But the roots that deeply thrust imagination

Below the hush of solid night,

That fork within the husk of burying vision

The sap entwined in rainbow light,

Through the ground restrained by its dead portion 

Sprouts with the shafts of the dawn's flight:

For the molten dross that spawn t' eternity

Auguries of serenity.

 

5

Thus, for the sight that stretches up to trample 

Spleen into glean, the starlings' wings 

Unlime their quills from the night-wearied mantle,

And, on skeins of radiant springs,

The crystal of colliding flints they dapple

Syphoning th'obscuring rings

Trough valleys where is girt the flowing hymn

That heaved the boughs above their rim.