[ilds] Poem offering

[James Gifford]

Hello all,

We're far from exhausting Charles' posting, but this poem has been 
haunting me lately, and I thought I would offer it up as another 
memorial to yesterday.  I've been caught on this one for a while, and it 
seems apt for the occasion.

Best,
James

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THE EGG
1939


Who first wrapped love in a green leaf,
And spread warm wings on the egg of death,
That my heart was hatched like a smooth stone,
And love in a green leaf locked?

Pity was naked: who dried her feathers
By the ancient pillow with cold ankles?
(Pity, my friend, fell in with the scorpion:
Murder with his bottle took my sweet.)

Who found passion without a leg,
Shrieked like the canticle of a ghost?
A bat spat his blood in the nursery:
A vessel in darkness but without a compass.

Anger first opened the book of the egg,
A bible of broken boys and natural women.
The choir sang like a bee in a bush,
And hunger, the dog, hummed in his paws.

Now time is wrapped in a green bay-leaf,
And a Roman summer covers the underworld,
O remember the heart hatched like cold stone,
And love in a green leaf locked.

1943/1939