tar caulked wooden floors
rowing with thirty two oars
within sight of shores
There came no blackbird to nest in your claw-hand,
Kevin, or fledge a brood strange and sun-shunned
as you in the cold, cooped, dirt and straw
strakes where you lay down in first abandon.
Awake at cock-crow, banty lullabied,
your wretched scratch of years in netted dark
appalled - appals.
Humanity denied is always local.
All you'd come to know was taken from you -
twice. They say you missed the feathery air
and turned your little ears to catch the coo
of pigeons on the roof. Can you despair?
The pity is, you never learned to play,
the mercy is, you never learned to pray.
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