Blue Wrens
Today I find you wandering.
It is clear that for hours before daylight
The wind has been scouring and tearing
At you. Your make-up, your hair though
A defiant last stand. You have broken up
Like a grand house at the end of the Season.
Now, in which room, where, do I find you?
We find a wall in something I say
And huddle behind like children playing “houses”
Ah! At last, relief!—these few words,
A sunny corner out of the wearing wind,
As traffic along the highway flares and sears,
Wears and wears and does not abate.
Although it is Spring, it is cold,
The air brightly malicious like magpie-beaked gossip
With its promises and its treachery. All
The new blossom overblown like advertising.
Abruptly, as soon as I speak again, bricks crumble
And you are ragged in a barren valley,
Dressed only in the veils djinns whip about you.
And I cannot give—or make, or find
A door, or its key, to a new day for you,
Ticket or passport away from here
Where voices, with hammering feathers
Flurrying…
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