20. Sumach and Birds

IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple

Shining in the six o’clock September dusk:

If the red sumach on the autumn roads

Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes:

If the red-haws never burst in a million

Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying:

If all this beauty of yours never crushed me

Then there are many flying acres of birds for me,

Many drumming gray wings going home I shall see,

Many crying voices riding the north wind.