Bird

O bird that was my vision,

my love, my dream that flew

over the famine-folded rocks,

the sky’s reflected snow.

O bird that found and fashioned me,

that brought me from the land

safe in her singing cage of bone,

the webbed wings of her hand.

She took me to the topmost air,

curled in the atom of her eye,

and there I saw an island rise

out of the empty sea.

And falling there she set me down

naked on soil that knew no plough,

and loveless, speechless, I beheld

the world’s beginning grow.

And there I slew her for my bread

and in her feathers dressed;

and there I raised a paradise

from the seed in her dead breast.