There’d be seams along each cloud of yonder,
Along streams too,
Where I’d stop
To gawk in wonder.

Crows stirr’d the sky above,
Invisible threads and silky lines,
Now revealed
Upon a flowerbed.

My love,
My love,
All dressed in linen red.

Fickle the grass would be,
Red linen to bend their will, you see.
My love,
My love,
I’ve come to set you free.

Blonde crochet,
Pulled apart,
Picked and shed.

So soft,
Yet dead,
This bun of silver thread.

Slips through my fingers
Like thick black lead,
A crack in the seam of your bodice;
I follow the stream of shivers
Sent along thy spine.

Glisten does the riverbed,
Ripples that purl
Of clothlike bend.

But therein the dead,
Cotton swell,
Of rosy blossom
That linger and dwell
In thick black lead.

I hold in my hand
The mallet I wed,
Found in the silver shed.