Glass, like that bird on the diamond mountain
Flying, flailing, top a deep cruel ocean
Whose beak must surely ache with trembling pain –
Oh, how I envy its straightforward glean.
My bones gasp at you, hollow, incomplete
If only one’s whole pursuit were as bare
As a bird’s scratch, a lover’s hook would fete
Sick, spectral stars, sparkling, all true loves are.
But to think, rejected by your absence
My bespoke mountain, my final problem
The forces up there, do not take offence
I’d give birds their mates; these words I’d spare them:
“Love is a smoke rais’d with the fume of sighs”
For another second would be too steigh.