Pueblo Pot

There as I bent above the broken pot from the mesa pueblo,
Mournfully many times its patterned shards piecing together and laying aside,
Appeared upon the house-top, two Navajos enchanted, the red-shafted flicker and his bride,
And stepped with lovely stride
To the pergola, flashing the wonder of their underwings;
There stood, mysterious and harsh and sleek,
Wrenching the indigo berry from the shedding woodbine with strong ebony beak.

His head without a crest
Wore the red full moon for crown;
The black new moon was crescent on the breast
Of each;
From the bodies of both a visible heat beat down,
And from the motion of their necks a shadow would fly and fall,
Skimming the court and in the yellow adobe wall
Cleaving a blue breach.

Powerful was the beauty of these birds.
It boomed like a struck bell in the silence deep and hot.
I stooped above the shattered clay; passionately I cried to the beauty of these birds,
“Solace the broken pot!”

The beauty of these birds
Opened its lips to speak;
Colours were its words,
The scarlet shaft on the grey cheek,
The purple berry in the ebony beak.
It said, “I cannot console
The broken thing; I can only make it whole.”

Wisdom, heretic flower, I was ever afraid
Of your large, cool petals without scent!
Shocked, betrayed,
I turned to the comfort of grief, I bent
Above the lovely shards.
But their colours had faded in the fierce light of the birds.
And as for the birds, they were gone. As suddenly as they had come, they went.