Very Like a Question Mark

It could never be the same, after
The sparrow ran into the clear glass
Pane -- it was then that the wooden frame
Bent, then that the window
Cracked, and he looked into the fragments
Of a world below gone black;

Sands melting into glass grind back to sands
And rinds, the chime of the breaking
Limes across the dawn, the setting sky,
While the little bird finds her apotheosis
High in the grubs and dirt; a sprig of grass
Has munched voracious on her hips, a mushroom
Pops between her nose, and all the world waits
For the gossamer fate of her toes: back in his mind

A hundred birds are falling like a thousand portals of glossy space
Are shutting, and the doors loom larger and larger, and the free of flight
Eludes captivity in air, and all songs sing
In shattered silence.

How singular the little creeping of light comes through the pane,
The vacuum sounds of traffic moving back and forth
-- And the long-green carpet of the earth
Is limned about with birds' feet poking out
Like little bits of linoleum.