I was a singer once. I sang that song.
What have I lost? We lived in forests then,
I was a singer once. In distant trees
What have I lost? The trees were full of birds.
I was a singer once, bird-ignorant.
What have I lost? At night my hooting tongue,
"I was a singer once," it sings.
What have I lost? Spook singer, hold your tongue.
What have I lost? When shall I start to sing
A loud and idiotic song that makes
The heart rise frightened into poetry
Like birds disturbed?
I saw the thousands of bewildered birds
Breaking their cover into poetry
Up from the heart.
Naked as jaybirds in the ever-real,
Eating our toasted buns and catching flies,
And sometimes angels, with our hooting tongues.
We made the forests ring with sacred noise
Of gods and bears and swans and sodomy,
And no one but a bird could hear our voice.
We sat there drinking at the sour wine
In gallon bottles. Shouting song
Until the hunters came.
Time with a gun said, "Stop,
Find other forests. Teach the innocent."
God got another and a third
Birdlimed in Eloquence.
Naked of feathers and of softening years,
Sings through the mirror at me like a whippoorwill
And then I cannot sleep.
"I sing the song that every captured tongue
Sang once when free and wants again to sing.
But I can sing no song I have not sung."
I sing a newer song no ghost-bird sings.
My tongue is sharpened on the iron's edge.
Canaries need no trees. They have their cage.