An old woman weeds a grave,
beneath a hush of ancient trees,
her brown hands so gentle with this soil.

And she thinks of all the love that’s flown:
those proud dandelions of the sun,
turned to stooping worlds of grey,

then blown to ghosts upon the wind,
so love anew might grow again,
though far away, and not for her.

And in her heart she cries for love —
and Something hears, then someone comes:
he strides the graves on tall green stilts,

his hair a swirl of shining gold
and lifts her in his furry arms
up the stairs of a graveyard house.

He sings his song in a voice like cream,
as he climbs on past the roofs and hills,
heedless of the winds that roar,

that sway the stairs beyond the stars.
Then he comes at last to a fire-lit room
and howls with love and slams the door.

He was not raised bodily to heaven as they said,
though when the god was torn out of the man,
he was without weight
and drifted like thistledown upon the breeze.

The children shouting with delight,
ran after him to see he was not harmed
and caught him as he passed across the vineyards
and brought him home tied to a string.

As he bobbed about above our heads
and his empty eyes gazed up towards the blue,
the summer breeze twittered through his wounds,
so that they spoke with the tongues of birds.

At once from the branches birds began to sing,
as if to the going down of the sun,
and even husks and stones and other mouthless things
seemed somehow to be singing too.

That stormy night he slipped away;
the string was hanging limp when morning came.
But we dreamed he was lifted by the winds,
to sail forever high above the world,

close to the stars, cleansed by gentle rains,
too holy for the earth, too gross for heaven,
his whistlings still ignored by the chilly dark,
though carried far on late migrating wings.