319

Two robins move discreetly
    Inside the midday shadow
Of a telegraph pole.
   They approach each other,
Sidelong, across the tarmac,

Angling their eyes quietly
   From one side to the other,
Hunching in their
   Black and orange and grey
Feathers, never venturing

Outside of the shadow of the
   Pole's great round trunk
Into the cool light
   Of noon. Across the road,
Daffodils nod in their beds.

As if at some sign, they fly
   Into the immediate air,
Orbiting as binary,
  Dancing furiously about
In the fire of their wings,

That are as substantial
   Only as the cool air itself.
Their love is violent
   As their violence is loving :
They are held in centrifuge.

They fall and seem to tend,
   Silently, before their own
Accomplishment,
   Or before some broader
Power that had moved them.