Wild Duck

I     That was a great night we spied upon     See-sawing home,     Singing a hot sweet song to the super-stars     Shuffling off behind the smoke-haze...     Fog-horns sentimentalizing on the river...     Lights dwindling to shining slits     In the wet asphalt...     Purring lights... red and green and golden-whiskered...     Digging daintily pointed claws in the soft mud...     ... But you did not know...     As the trains made golden augers     Boring in the darkness...     How my heart kept racing out along the rails,     As a spider runs along a thread     And hauls him in again     To some drawing point...     You did not know     How wild ducks' wings     Itch at dawn...     How at dawn the necks of wild ducks     Arch to the sun     And new-mown air     Trickles sweet in their gullets.     II     As water, cleared of the reflection of a bird     That has lately flown across it,     Yet trembles with the beating of its wings,     So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly...     Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song     You might have been....     'Twas a great night...     With never a waste look over a shoulder     Curved to the crook of the wind...     And a great word we threw     For memory to play knuckles with...     A word the waters of the world have washed,     Leaving it stark and without smell...     A world that rattles well in emptiness: Good-by.