songsandpoems

You are no longer young, Nor are you very old. There are homes where those belong. You know you do not fit When you observe the cold Stares of those who sit In bath-chairs or the park (A stick, then, at their side) Or find yourself in the dark And see the lovers who, In love and in their stride, Don't even notice you. This is a time to begin Your life. It could be new. The sheer not fitting in With the old who envy you And the young who want to win, Not knowing false from true, Means you have liberty Denied to their extremes. At last now you can be What the old cannot recall And the young long for in dreams, Yet still include them all.

I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird Against the walls did beat himself and was this not absurd? For sun and rain beat in that cell that had its fourth wall free And daily blew the summer shower and the rain came presently And the pretty summer time and all the winter too That foolish bird did beat himself till he was black and blue. Rouse up, rouse up, my raven bird, fly by the open wall You make a prison of a place that is not one at all. I took my raven by the hand, Oh come, I said, my Raven, And I will take you by the hand and you shall fly to heaven. But oh he sobbed and oh he sighed and in a fit he lay Until two fellow ravens came and stood outside to say: You wretched bird, conceited lump You well deserve to pine and thump. See, now a wonder, mark it well My bird rears up in angry spell, Oh do I then? he says and careless flies O'er flattened wall at once to heaven’s skies, And in my dream I watched him go And I was glad, I loved him so, Yet when I woke my eyes were wet To think Love had not freed my pet, Anger it was that won him hence As only Anger taught him sense. Often my tears fall in a shower Because of Anger’s freeing power.