Spring Song

One morning at first light
Sound came to our window:
A double knock like a hard heart,
The iambic beat of Paradise Lost.

I had not slept. I looked out
Through a slit of bright morning.
Wave after wave of bird, one bird,
Was breaking on the pane.

He had spun his enemy
Out of his own body.
His own ghost haunted him.
I recognized that fight.

He must have known that birds
Are not as cold as glass feels
At the end of a March night
Nor have crocodile feathers.
...