In a pine tree,A few yards away from my window sill,A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,On a branch.I laugh, as I see him abandon himselfTo entire delight, for he knows as well as I doThat the branch will not break.

The JewelThere is this caveIn the air behind my bodyThat nobody is going to touch:A cloister, a silenceClosing around a blossom of fire.When I stand upright in the wind,My bones turn to dark emeralds.

But I have burned already down to bone. There is a fire that burns beyond the names Of sludge and filth of which this world is made. Agony sears the dark flesh of the body, And lifts me higher than the smoke, to rise Above the earth, above the sacrifice; Until my soul flares outward like a blue Blossom of gas fire dancing in mid-air: Free of the body’s work of twisted iron.

I have torn myself out of many bitter placesIn America, that seemedTall and green-rooted in mid-noon.