The Songbirds Who Sing With Our Tongues Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Scarred and unbeautified, I somehow have abducted a beautiful
Woman eight years young than I, who my nineteen year
Old cousin also tries to court;
But right now I am even outside of her, and the fruit market is closed:
The water cooler of my hunting grounds is bereft with the mercurial
Visions of both of her eyes;
And the way I have propositioned her atop the nursery but on my
Knees:
And she, my Alma, has promised me that we will be married tomorrow-
Always tomorrow, until she goes back home, and the pictures of
Her bed like a nest into which the shivering birds fold their wings:
Next door, but beside their lovers who eyes are small enough to
Disappear with the grains of sand on a beach,
She lines herself with the cadavers wavering like gossiping anemones
In the shallows of the streak-
Who will roll over for anyone, but she cannot swim, so her brown
Limbs curl around me like intelligence in wood, in furniture:
And I gather her up lovingly like driftwood for the fires of my blue
Bed, to which in my troubadouring artwork I am always
Leading her to,
And the insularly cathedrals like legumes half cracked open in the sunlight
But forgotten by the laborers of the day;
Making a lunch for the songbirds who sing with our tongues
In a living room where no one is left standing who believes.