I chanced upon a crow
Abandoned in a hedge
He did not move before me, lo
Left aside by roadway dredge

I knelt before his plume
And saw his eyes were took
I asked him, Crow, what is our doom?
He told me with a look

It is the sky and so the sea
To the spirits of the deep
It is the pillow to the free
Eyes weary for their sleep

It is the moment when the herd
Won't notice that you're gone
For I may be a dying bird
But it's the world that's wrong.

I took his pain off with a knife
And he said with his free breath
Grateful I am for my life
But I live much more with death

The man was truly strange
Hiding cards behind his clever fingers
Cleverer than me.

He winked down my hood
And laughed
Who he was was not important

In the circus tent
Nothing held power like the cards
And he said

'I deal in cream and grey,
Put a cross in my hand and
I am what you say I am.'

And now he has a roguish smile
His feet turned up and
The bell rang

I put down the pencil
And he froze
Never to move again

He dealt in cream and grey
He delved in graphite and imprints
Nobody told him otherwise.

He smiled,
And the lines on his face were dug anew
About his mouth,
To the girl with lines around her eyes.

She shut them tight
And thought of worlds of sun and stars
Where men flew and birds watched in envy
She was watched by the man with lines on his brow

For he frowned
Head of liquid knowledge hung
Heavily over the page
And the lines of his thought marked deeper

A joke, a dream, a book
All this and more to these different ones
Many more with lines from all their lives of spleandour or squalour
I thought of them and the lines wrote themselves

Deep in thoughtful ink.

Howl, dread wind,
Howl your dread loss
Of times when ruddy lords danced merry in candlelight
Of low halls strung with the forest's skeleton
Of the high hills holding beast and other wonders of the night
Howl
For that corner of a peak trough
Catching the rain and cupping it
To the thirsty mouth of the beast within
To the sword of the proud beggar
And his honour in the sky
Which he looked upon from a hill
Quiet on his cold brow
And as he listened
He heard the howl
Of the times long passed.
Howl, dread wind.