Cambridge Sky

I look up
and a thousand rocking children
are candle-bled from my eyes;
wax-wet sons and daughters
bled from the womb of my eyes.
Ah these are the slowest hours
cloud into cloud like slow motion flowers
until one cloud becomes all
and I become blind.

The last minute of sight
is a long bird unafraid to sing
and I will see the last triumph of bird in sky
before the wind wrecks the wing.

Gregory Corso, Elegiac Feelings American, New Directions, 1970.