When Grey Shapes Slip the Shadows - by
When grey shapes slip the shadows of the morning
/ My small birds sit in silence in the eaves
/ But daylight brings indifferent…
When grey shapes slip the shadows of the morning
/ My small birds sit in silence in the eaves
/ But daylight brings indifferent…
Friend, I have lost the way.
/ The way leads on.
/ Is there another way?
/ The way is one.
/ I must retrace the track.
/ It’s lost…
The Minister said it wad dee,
/ the cypress buss I plantit.
/ But the buss grew…
They have come
/ to scald our blood, to call us out
/ from our bright houses to the twisted shadows under trees.
/ Let us…
To-day I reach the zenith of my life,
/ No time more noble in my span of years
/ Than this, the glorious…
Arriving late sometimes and never
/ Quite expected, still they come,
/ Bringing a folded meaning home
/ Between the lines, inside the letter.
/
/ As a scarecrow…
When the explorer landed on the first island
/ no innocent, fearful or naked
/ men and women
/ peered from behind the vegetation
/
/ neither poisoned arrows…
Trouble is not my middle name.
/ It is not what I am.
/ I was not born for this.
/ Trouble is not a place
/ though…
Out of the night that covers me,
/ Black as the pit from pole to pole,
/ I thank whatever gods may be
/ For my…
Ne’er fash your thumb what gods decree
/ To be the weird o’ you or me,
/ Nor deal in cantrip’s kittle cunning
/ To spier…
While the penny spins,
pale beams catch on a lost key in a nest,
roll over roofs and drop into the alley,
and we are shadows in that alley.