Wild Duck

I That was a great night we spied upon See-sawing home, Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze… Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river… Lights dwindling to shining slits In the wet asphalt… Purring lights… red and green and golden-whiskered… Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud… … But you did not know… As the trains made golden augers Boring in the darkness… How my heart kept racing out along the rails, As a spider runs along a thread And hauls him in again To some drawing point… You did not know How wild ducks' wings Itch at dawn… How at dawn the necks of wild ducks Arch to the sun And new-mown air Trickles sweet in their gullets. II As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird That has lately flown across it, Yet trembles with the beating of its wings, So my soul… emptied of the known you… utterly… Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been…. 'Twas a great night… With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind… And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with… A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell… A world that rattles well in emptiness: Good-by.