Monday, December 6, 2010

A poem by Robert Francis


Waxwings
by Robert Francis


Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush

in sun, and I am one.


Such merriment and such sobriety—

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk—

was this not always my true style?


Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds.  Can you mistake us?


To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together—for this I have abandoned

all my other lives.

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