(1) Mixed Flocks
Is there then no light? – how at the last
their flight all is down. Proud crow,
leper starling, all stoop so,
hungry only, after the long fast
seeing was. Flying brought them past
mansions – seen fields of snow,
ermine mirrors, hiding a below
where ripe foul bright rot massed.
Under the boughs that cut off heaven here
they scrounge now for scatter, cold groats,
anything never sun came near –
deep for those dark-hulled blood-boats,
the bodies they must tow, to feed upon
far from the light their eyes have overgone.
(2) White Bird Landing
Weighing the bough, setting his very blood
upon it as his jewel in the pan,
scratching burl and unblossoming bud
to see if they will have him, if he can
be lowered here among them and be still
sitting among their low withering witness,
whether his eyes will neighbor them, wing will
touch them in their down and hard and itness
or whether his body, having light to bear
in forms that are too wide for here to clasp,
will find its better weight again in air,
over the barks that break beneath his grasp.
Dearest of burdens, seers of both sides,
his eyes will go where not the blood abides.
(3) Too Big Bird
They kept him in a shed; he was too big
and over for the seen sparrow field,
too tall-ly aquiver to kick twig,
scratch sand, waddle the sun-sealed
bounded acre as it dried around.
Wings of his, fitting a night-flier,
hung as a weapon weighing him to ground:
his heaven was harder, not higher.
He beat grass, smote stalk under,
slapped slat till pale fell away
and the one that needed wonder was the wonder,
stumbling out of stubble into day,
gaped by the here-keepers till their eyes
lost him into the darkness of his rise.
--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)
