Bird Song

Your song drifts over the stale stillness,

Sharp and shrill, mutilating my mind

With sweet, sad remembrances of death.

Did not Keats hear your refrain and mourn

The power of its persistent pulse

And Shelly laud your lilting lullaby?

Your beauty is a calloused curse,

Maligned by festering falsehoods.


Unheard oracle, you sing, oblivious

To the smothering grip of mindlessness.

Since Poe first foretold Diana's death

The earth swells with neglected truths

Ignored by survival's endless strain.

With a catechism of promise,

Cataloged with false fragmented facts,

We prey on the deaf starvation of your voice.



Bleeding, blistering with light, I listen,

Terrified by the intensity of my homage.

Scraps of soul drift in the scalding dust,

Destined to dampen my memory.

Hollow chasms echo with your cries,

Murdering silence with manacles

Forged with our own forgetfulness and

The remains of your rejected hymn.