They scale the forks of trees, hang from branches, swing and leap—beyond the fence the North of thieves turns gray,

And from the very orchard where your eye spent the night, they fish a flattened whistle out of the mist.

It gets frenzied in a cop's fist and flips its gills, and lifts its eyes and throat in a fishy sort of squint.

Now it is a pea of fibrillating silver that pales over the fence like a gray-blue star.

And to the East where Tivoli expires in a tubercular summer, the gutted whistle gasps clogged by agonizing dust.

When it was Desdemona's time to sing, and every second wanted to be filled, she wept, not over love, her star, but over willow, willow, willow.

When it was Desdemona's time to sing, and her murmuring softened the stones around the black day, her blacker demon prepared a psalm of weeping streams.

When it was Ophelia's time to sing, and every second wanted to be filled, the dryness of her soul was swept away like straws from haystacks in a storm.

When it was Ophelia's time to sing, and the bitterness of her own tears had exhausted her, what weedy trophies did she hold? Those of willow, and columbine.