As payment for your colour storm
an acid sky blackens every flower.
You feel your breath touching down
and hold on to the voice you know
on each lip corner, two now frozen
hedges to your country.
You can still alight on words
or sharpen them as you wish;
you can linger and stretch them
like the skin of a birch-bark letter
read before a mirror.
How easily you get what you want!
But if you step on the spot
the fully grown mouth passes
the feather of a red-headed
Irish angel three times between you.
When you are breath-bound
it is purely breath that is stopped.