The Bird at Dawn

What I saw was just one eye In the dawn as I was going : A bird can carry all the sky In that little button glowing. Never in my life I went So deep into the firmament.

He was standing on a tree, All in blossom overflowing ; And he purposely looked hard at me, At first, as if to question merrily : " Where are you going ? " But next some far more serious thing to say I could not answer, could not look away. Oh, that hard, round, and so distracting eye Little mirror of all sky !- And then the after-song another tree Held, and sent radiating back on me.

If no man had invented human word, And a bird-song had been The only way to utter what we mean, What would we men have heard, What understood, what seen, Between the trills and pauses, in between The singing and the silence of a bird ?