I keep an aviary.
There are a thousand cages.
There are 999 doors.
There is one lock.
I lade tables with pies, sugar cubes, golden gewgaws,
but my birds want only old string, dead grass, rotten leaves.
They jam their homes to bursting with the stuff.
Birds, sing for me,
ease my heart,
and though you hate it, please symbolize
all the usual for me--freedom, beauty, delicacy--
But all you display is the patches on your shoulders
and a dull imbecility.
There are 999 doors, every one of them open!
Still, you just sit there in your trash of straw, trembling.
I should feed you my anger,
watch you incinerate, bewildered, an inch from the gaping exit.
Birds, sing for me
ease my heart,
produce your automatic but lovely songs
for the wretched one behind the iron and only lock for miles around.
______
for this.
Oh, I feel this poem - the cages, the lethargic birds, trembling inside the open door. I have been those birds. "Birds, sing for me, ease my heart." Those automatic songs, sadder than no song. And how could they know a gladder one? I dont know how you think up these amazing tales. Wow! And that wretched one behind the only locked door, even sadder. Fantastic poem!
ReplyDeleteWow you have done it again. Created thoughts and images, I could never have thought up if given 100 years! Freedom sometimes is right there, but we are used to our nests and cages. I absolutely adore the first stanza Shay! A deep and amazing image grows with it!
ReplyDeleteThe last stanza is especially gripping. Good write!
ReplyDeletelots of fear in freedom, is that the anger that locks the wings from flying...bkm
ReplyDeleteThis poem opened 999 doors in my mind as I read it.. We all need a place to feed our anger, no matter how appealing it is to be free.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh... automatic but lovely. Wow
ReplyDeleteThat single luck reads so heavy...
ReplyDelete