and you refrain and stifle in your throat the scream and bury it
in the depths of your heart before it breaks
and you leap from there and go out--and here the earth's as it is every day,
and the sun like the day before yesterday throws its light to the earth.
Translated from the Hebrew by Alar Hadari
L.
S. ASEKOFF
Brother, Crow
for Eamon Grennan
You have heard that batdecry that is
shrill mockery of itself,
&
in aftershock of silence looked up to see,
shattering a sky, blueblack bleakness
of their lofty fall,
dark wings.
Come to earth
this Sunday morning by the doorstep
where you stand, iced branches of forsythia
in your hands, how they lord it over
all this whiteness - bootblack braggadocios
dragging haggard shadows cross the snow
as though to say,
All conquering Sun,
after your kingdom come vassels
of
the crow,
the hangman
&
the undertakers.
Older than mortality,
moon-silvered cinders of the brightest star
fix
you in chill gleaming. Banquo's
ghost? Pale scarecrow? No,
only one who suffers from "the fatal spell."
As those who turn their backs on sleep
wake to the nightmare at the gate
you watch the great in-gathering wings
of the Sabbath flock
clamoring, congregate upon the chosen spot.
Blue-carbon beaks poking peck
the frozen rose.
