Redwing Blackbirds by Robert Penn Warren

 

Redwing Blackbirds
by Robert Penn Warren

How far a-winging to keep this appointment with April!
How much breath left in reserve to fill
The sky of washed azure and whipped-cream cumuli
With their rusty, musical, heart-plumbing cry!

On sedge, winter-bit but erect, on old cattails, they swing
Throast throb, your field glasses say, as they cling and sing -- 
If singing is what you call that rusty, gut-grabbing cry
That calls on life to be lived gladly, gladly

They twist, tumble, tangle, they glide and curvet,
And sun stabs the red splash to scarlet on each epaulet.
And the lazy distance of hills seems to take
A glint more green, and dry grass at your feet to wake.

In the vast of night, seasons later, sleet coding on pane,
Fire dead on hearth, hope banked in heart, I again
Awake, not in dream but with eyes shut, believing I hear
That rusty music far off, far off, and catch flash and fleer

Of a scarlet slash accenting the glossy black. Sleet
Continues. The heart continues its steady beat
AS I burrow into the tumulus of sleep,
Where all things are buried, though no man for sure knows how deep.

The globe grinds on, proceeds with the business of Aprils and men.
Next year will redwings see me, or I them, again then?
If not, some man else may pause, awaiting that rusty, musical cry,
And catch -- how gallant -- the flash of epaulets scarlet against blue sky.