Suggestion of Bird Song

Death hasn’t been born yet, it’s asleep
on a rose-colored beach. Consider the Greek:
he didn’t die from infamy and hemlock;
and above the Acropolis he burns.

Who told you that envy’s finger
streaked my clothes with yellow?
It was a butterfly overloaded
with pollen passing by.

Do you hear? Rats in the offices
aren’t biting the boss’s soles;
That’s a fine rain of dry

violets that rustles as it falls;
and the young man’s unraveling heart
is William’s heroic apple.