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| Four Crows |
It is January and there are crows like black flowers on the snow. (1)
The temple where crow worships walks forward in tall, black grass (2)
God, disgusted with man turned towards heaven, and man, disgusted with God,
turned towards Eve, but Crow ........Crow nailed them together, (3)
never plaintive nor appealing, quite at home when ..stealing,
"I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads." (4)
So man cried, but with God's voice
And God bled with man's voice.
Crow grinned crying "This is my Creation" Flying the black flag of himself. (5)
And comes that other fall we name the fall. The bird would cease and be
as other birds, but that he knows in singing not to sing. (6)
The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing. (7)
The free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream
till the current ends and dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim
the sky. (8) Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing .. the eye of the
blackbird. A man and a woman are one, a man and a woman and a blackbird
are one. (9) And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? (10)
Splashes of pepper
Spice an empty blue bowl-- (11)
How the crows dream of you, caught at last in their black beaks. Dream of you
leaking your life away. Your wings crumbling like old bark. Feathers falling from your breast
like leaves, and your eyes two bolts of lightning gone to sleep.The litany of lonesomeness leaves
nothing left for the crow's rosary to be counted on. In the weepdusk, he cries in a deafening
crowd,
"Carry on waiting, carrion. Carrion waiting!" (12)
Wings dark as midnight glittering on snow ...harsh crude mocking cries...faint whispers
of ..knotty sheen..ever ...wait -- patiently in darkened clefts of ...gray green yews. (13)
Finally, just under the clouds...streaming across the sky, its feet like black leaves (14)
When the blackbird flies out of sight, It marks the edge
of one of many circles. (9)
A Cento for FormForAll hosted today by the illustrious Sam Peralta @dVersePoets Pub
Compiled by Gay Reiser Cannon * 9/27/2012
Attributions:
(1) Crows, 1990 © Mary Oliver
(2) Crow Law, 1993 © Linda Hogan
(3) Crow Blacker Than Ever © Ted Hughes
(4) Hawk Roosting © Ted Hughes
(5) Crows © Ted Hughes
(6) The Crow © John Burroughs
(7) The Oven Bird © Robert Frost
(8) I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings © Maya Angelou
(9) Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird I, IV, IX © Wallace Stevens
(10) Crow's Rosary, 1987, Scott Edward Anderson
(11) The Blackbird © John Clare
(12) In The Pine Woods Crow & Owl, © Mary Oliver
(13) Crows, 1998 © Michael Collings
(14) The Swan © Mary Oliver
