The Thrush
In the mist-drunk hour before the sun's lamp lights
she sang like a thrush in the violet haze
to the man, her helmstone through bitter days:
o say will you have me
yes or no?
I'll gladly give you a cup of tears
emptied out upon the ground;
each tear a pearl, each pearl a sound:
blue loving's sigh, a dream of rain
skippering sharp on a green sea wall.
I'll give you back twelve golden years.
Those years elsewise could
not return,
the years you lost, the life you burned,
a thousand nights, each night a rose
flowering with a different name.
I'll give you a pen with quicksilver ink
a pen of wet stars for fifteen dreams
in rings of time and all lost worlds
and however you write your words will sing
I tell you true, it will be just so.
O say will you have me
yes or no?
He spoke from below her darkened tree:
all these I would take if you were she,
if you were the thing you can never be,
instead of a thrush with notes of air
that sings before dawn
without a soul.
~March 2016
posted for real toads
This poem was 'translated' from a translation, of a Swedish folk song called "Herr Mannelig"
Image: Wing Of A Blue Roller, 1512, Albrecht Durer public domain
