Sawdust And Diamonds      From the top of the flight   Of the wide, white stairs   Through the rest of my life   Do you wait for me there?      There's a bell in my ears   There's a wide white roar   Drop a bell down the stairs   Hear it fall forevermore      Hear it fall forevermore      Drop a bell off of the dock   Blot it out in the sea   Drowning mute as a rock;   And sounding mutiny      There's a light in the wings   Hits this system of strings   From the side while they swing;   See the wires, the wires, the wires      And the articulation   In our elbows and knees   Makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase   As the audience admires      And the little white dove   Made with love, made with love:   Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers      Swings a low sickle arc   From its perch in the dark   Settle down   Settle down my desire      And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor   Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember      Then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in   And cleft me right down through my center   And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never      Push me back into a tree   Bind my buttons with salt   And fill my long ears with bees   Praying: please, please, please,   Love, you ought not!   No you ought not!      Then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings   (cut from cardboard and old magazines)   Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow   And in the place where I stood, there is a circle of wood   A cord or two, which you chop and you stack in your barrow      It is terribly good to carry water and chop wood   Streaked with soot, heavy booted and wild-eyed;   As I crash through the rafters   And the ropes and pulleys trail after   And the holiest belfry burns sky-high      Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision   While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision   And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision   Doubled over with the hunger of lions   'Hold me close', cooed the dove   Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds      I wanted to say: why the long face?   Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face   Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!   Sing: I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay   Just to lift your long face      And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave   Your precious longface   And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate   - why the long face?   And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil   - why the long face?      In the trough of the waves   Which are pawing like dogs   Pitch we, pale-faced and grave,   As I write in my log      Then I hear a noise from the hull   Seven days out to sea   And it is the damnable bell!      And it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!   It tolls for me!      And though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break   Still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water   And they will recognise all the lines of your face   In the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter      and darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine   Appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes   But if it's all just the same, then will you say my name:   Say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?      I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight   No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright   So: enough of this terror   We deserve to know light   And grow evermore lighter and lighter   You would have seen me through   But I could not undo that desire      Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire   Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire   Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh desire      From the top of the flight   Of the wide, white stairs   Through the rest of my life   Do you wait for me there