The Shape of a Bird
" Break off your argument, Dearest of friends, with patient whom I have turned this muted wood To a long, carpeted room, Hearing you always invent New cures for a sickly mood. Drop your eyes to the floor : We have strolled, you see, by accident To a corner we missed before— What do you see with your Imaginative eye ? "
" Feathers—a circle of grey : Little arena empty of strife Some murdered ring-dove. Why ?- Very well ! I see the way Death is haunted by life : A circle of feathers keeping Vaguely the shape of a bird ; Though, at mere thought of a wind's creeping, Each could be separately stirred, The whole image blurred— What would you'have me see ? "
" A man and his children keeping Vaguely the shape of a family still, When the meaning is lost that she Alone could give to that word.
Or again, that man alone, Keeping, by effort of will, - The shape of the self she freed, Like the shape of a lost, migratory bird— With all coherence gone.
With moods that one by one To the wind's humour succeed."
LAURENCE WHISTLER.
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