tell me, tell me tell tell tell
when ducks beat pebbles
a tribal thunder
and beetles scramble stumbling beneath leafs
tell tell, the warm-bellied lady
said birds become children

and flutes the grasshoppers they hear
in warm green sleeps
as out curl curling
the stout sun-seasoned caterpillars
shrill now! now not! now piercing needles
sewing brazen black black to brittle dreamings
tell me tell me tell
what the old man said, said
lyres rebel rebel and
strum, say, strum taut a riot unsettled
even as geese vanish grey
in grey
and ducks pat their way away
to springs of seas where no child sails

even then
the sky plucks her lightening sly
and claps claps claps the day,
the night, the day, down
to a kites sway
as a perfect moon-arc it cuts
and
we heard birth
brings along a dress
that tribe men
and tribe women flower
when they
spin and spin and circle clapping
cursing merriment up the sick old sky

who need fly

tell me tell me, valley-joy on a face of age,
oh human song and human sigh! tell tell
also of koel’s mimic cry

tell tell, tell then
and they pound their feet
together apart together apart and the ground remembers, the ground
remembers!
and then tell this too! we heard,
ducks lurk by listening
practicing
their
drums! and and
and some

some children almost hear

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