In the choir the boys are singing the hymn.
The morning light on their lips
Moves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim.
Sudden outside the high window, one crow
Hangs in the air
And lights on a withered oak-tree's top of woe.
One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top
Of the withered tree!--in the grail
Of crystal heaven falls one full black drop.
Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway
In the tender wine
Of our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day.
The snow piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
Frogs plutter and squdge — and frogs beat
the air with a recurring thin
steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens ; they march their
black feathers past a blue pool ; they
celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits
on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people?
What was the name you called me? —
And why did you go so soon?
The crows lift their caw on the wind,
And the wind changed and was lonely.
The warblers cry their sleepy-songs
Across the valley gloaming,
Across the cattle-horns of early stars.
Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.
What was the name you called me? —
And why did you go so soon?