OH! BIRD!

I heard a flaming noise that screamed—

"Man, panting, crushed, must be redeemed!

Man! All the crowd of him!

Quiet or loud of him!

Men! Raging souls of them!

Heaps of them, shoals of them!

Hurtling impassioned through fiery-tongued rapture!

Leaping for glories all avid to capture

Bounteous æons of star-beating bliss!"

I heard a voice cry, and I'm sure it said this:

Though the cook said the noise was a tree and a bird ...

But I heard! Gods, I heard!

Conrad Aiken

(Creeping mysteriously out of the twilight, draped in a complex.)