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Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by:
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 16, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
It would be easy to forgive,
If I could but remember;
If I could hear, lost love of mine,
The music of your cruelties,
Shaking to sound the silent skies,
Could voice with them their song divine,
Red with pain’s leaping ember:
It would be easy to forgive,
Hope gnawed at my heart like a hungry rat,
Ran in and out of my dreams high-walled,
I heard its scampering feet: “Pretty rat— pretty rat—!” I called,
And crumbled it songs to eat.
Dawn slips within my room to say good-by:
Buffeted, bruised, by autumn rain
All night,
While I lay sleeping, held to dreams, again
She comes from out the violated sky,
Dragging her tarnished light.