The probing knife of madness
Can start a dullard brain;
Cold cheeks feel kisses
And warm with tears again
The whispering in the marrow spreads to the brain;
The remembering heart carries it round again
Till it beats in the throat, the lips, the weeping eye
And is born at last in a blazing wordless outcry.
Father remembered the wild pigeons crowding
Beech groves, mast-rich. The flutter in boughs, the cloud
Darkening all, a hurricane circling and surging.
Eye lost count, ear could not measure sound.
Mind hurled measureless with them, feathered the sky.