Mary Austin

I DO not know who sings my songs

Before they are sung by me.

For my mind is an ordered house

Where never a song should be;

And the world is the sort of a place

That my judicious spirit grieves.

Yet when my thoughts are seated round

With their eyes upon the ground,

The little songs come flimmering

Like swallows round the eaves.

And when my life is as dry as a gourd,

My heart the pebble, rattled by despair,

Shaken at the funeral

Of all the gods that were,

I stretch my thoughts in the empty room—

And suddenly my songs are there.