The gash that tears the sparrow’s wing
rent by the talons of the hawk:
This is the wound in everything,
the canker in each golden stalk,
so all the wheat is wounded wheat
and all the bread is broken bread,
and there is nothing else to eat
but feasts laid out to feed the dead.
But death itself’s insatiable,
and we are droplets to its thirst,
a gullet never brimming full—
but fill it once and it would burst.
Oh, who can fill the wild abyss
that sucks us down into the pit?
What life could ever conquer this
and not become a prey to it?
Only the life that cannot die,
a river pouring endlessly
from fountains never running dry,
could fill the maw and set us free.
Pour down, O Love, your endless self
of oceans, rivers, rain, and dew.
When you have drowned the jaws of death,
the sparrow’s wing will be made new.
Bruno Liljefors – House sparrows among the thorns (1886) – Bukowskis, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138306035
Kate Bluett 