BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES

ALL I can give you is broken-face gargoyles.
It is too early to sing and dance at funerals,
Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker
humming a lullaby and throwing his feet en a swift and mystic
buck-and-wing, now you seet and now you dont't.

Fish to swim the pool in your garden flashing a speckled silver,
A basquet of wine-saps filling your room with flame-dark for your
eyes and the tang of valley orchards for your nose,
Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples,
I cannot bring you now.
It is too early and I am not footloose yet.

I shall come in the night when I come with a hammer and saw.
I shall come near your window, where you look out when your
eyes are open in the morning.
And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird-baths for
wing-loose wrens and hummers to live in, birds with yellow
wing tips to blur and buzz soft all summer,
So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always open doors for
all and each to run away when they want to.
I shall come just like that even though now is early and I am not
yet footlose,
Even though I am still looking an undertaker with a raw, wind-
bitten face and dance in his feet.
I make a date with you (put it down) for six o' clock in the evening
a thousand years from now.

All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles.
All I can give you now is a double gorilla head with two fish
mouths and four eagle eyes hooked on a street wall,
spounting water and looking two ways to the ends of the
street for the new people, the young strangers, coming,
coming, always coming.

It is early.
I shall yet be footlose.

Carl Sandburg