As I was staring at the Oracle’s words, wondering how to make sense of them, one of the pheasants started cough-crowing outside. Suddenly I knew what they meant.
Morning meadow with pheasants
The morning cries out to me
with the voice of the pheasant,
the great glossy jungle fowl,
and I wonder how they last through the night,
the chicks in the nest, when fox and weasel prowl,
and the long grass hides nothing from gimlet eyes.
The sky looks down, and I look
for the fabled haloed beneficence,
the sun-smile of protecting motherly arms,
see only gnarled, cold fingers that refuse to die,
teeth that glitter in the dark, hear the pulsing
steel pump in the chest that never slows.
We are all chicks, downy and wingless,
the darkness full of gimlet eyes and insatiable bellies.
The Four Swans 