Sparrow

This was more like the atmosphere

had been pinched, whose chirp was an unexpected gust

in a harmonium enough

to break all that high horse talk

that curdles the atmosphere. While centaurs

ate grass and hurdled epitaphs, that chirp

in the midst did change one of us.

Did you not catch it?

It is enough to gather at your age;

It is enough to note just what

was said that provoked the Alps to rage.

And the eye sews along. But can it cup

a crazing off the tops of trees?

Just one eye as yours could be enough—

one for six moons that surround

the mind’s water birth, while a lily on its cot

bloated, lapses. Sparrow, here again! Countless

consuls tower and luff but the world sizes

down to a restless heart:

To the one note that repeats itself and is all.

To the note one repeats to one’s self and all. 

To the one line spitting the heart into flight.

Metaphor is elsewhere, a jewel resulting

in the snout of a pig. Sparrow, here—nearly unresting thing

which always seems suddenly to never have left

my mind. Because you will so easily disappear,

I think of you as infinitely near.