Classic Poem

Cocks in the north at dawn
crow softly, drowsily.

Cocks in the south
crow when the stars
of dawn are grains of maize
in the sky's wide blue close.

Clarion. Clangour.
Every clarion clamant
for the supreme clarion cry.

Cockloft dian,
dawn stir
of cavalry.

At night when the last
fortress is ashes,
dreaming we hear
blue rockets soar,
violet and white,
when the cocks crow. . . .

In your insomnia, festive spirit,
do you not hear him crowing,
the cock who flung to heaven the doubloons
of the Seven of Gold? . . .

Gazing on this night gambling soon I saw,
falling through the blackness of space,
in golden dust and topaz mist
the four notes of the cockalorum. . . .

Symphonic cockloft,
across your harsh and strident clarions
a neigh of terror peals,
runaway, like a colt,
and, murmurous, the other sounds,
household, rural,
of the village morning,
light as running water. . . .