The tree, a shock of red and yellow, shakes its crown;
The parrot hovers, kept from nest;
The year is overblown; the hangdog sun goes down;
And bones, though old, are yet impressed.
The wind alone is loud with distant lamentations ---
An infidel intoning runic evocations,
While Time, at wanton play amidst extinct oblations,
Reiterates its ageless jest;
And rid of dust from homing kine, the sky transcends the
common noun ---
The tree's ambition and the parrot's forfeit nest.

Then all at once, uprushing from chthonic deep,
The Dark Begetter overhelms,
The wind grows deathly still, and latitudes of sleep
Disintegrate the charted realms.
Oh, no, the night is not inert: its chronic fever
Breaks out in spangled sweat, as straining at some lever,
It alters far to near; and subtle like the beaver,
The moment makes of fretted elms
An ark for perfect self-assurance. But involved in whirlwinds'
sweep,
The parrot strays till Void, triumphant, overwhelms.