A star that was mute
Was heard to sing.
A flower took wing,
A bird took root.
The Right is a Wrong,
The Wrong is a Right.
I fought with the Night,
I sang you a song.
I slaughtered Time,
For the path I trod
To the feet of God
Was the road of a rhyme.
A flower took wing,
A bird took root.
A star that was mute
Was heard to sing.
THE PRISONER
If you have not a bird inside you,
You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
A beak and a bleeding wing,
Then you have reason to sing.
If merely you are clever
With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
The veins of our singing-birds,
With blades of glinting words.
Yet if a Song, without ending,
Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
Tear through your lungs for breath,
Sing—or you bleed to death.