How it thrills us

How it thrills us, the bird's clear cry...

Any cry that was always there.

Children, playing in the open air,

children already go crying by

real cries. Cry chance in. Through crevasses

in that same space whereinto, as dreaming

men into dreams, the pure bird-cry passes

they drive their splintering wedge of screaming.

Where are we? Freer and freer, we gyre

only half up, kites breaking

loose, with our frills of laughter flaking

away in the wind. — Make the criers a choir,

singing god! that resurgently waking

may bear on its waters the head and the lyre.