She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower Closing its crimson throat: my own throat in her power Strangled, my heart swelled up so full As if it would burst its wineskin in my throat, Choke me in my own crimson; I watched her pull The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did float Over my eyes and I was blind-- Her large brown hand stretched over The windows of my mind, And in the dark I did discover Things I was out to find: My grail, a brown bowl twined With swollen veins that met in the wrist, Under whose brown the amethyst I longed to taste: and I longed to turn My heart's red measure in her cup, I longed to feel my hot blood burn With the lambent amethyst in her cup. Then suddenly she looked up And I was blind in a tawny-gold day Till she took her eyes away. So she came down from above And emptied my heart of love ... So I held my heart aloft To the cuckoo that fluttered above, And she settled soft. It seemed that I and the morning world Were pressed cup-shape to take this reiver Bird who was weary to have furled Her wings on us, As we were weary to receive her: This bird, this rich Sumptuous central grain, This mutable witch, This one refrain. This laugh in the fight, This clot of light, This core of night. She spoke, and I closed my eyes To shut hallucinations out. I echoed with surprise Hearing my mere lips shout The answer they did devise. Again, I saw a brown bird hover Over the flowers at my feet; I felt a brown bird hover Over my heart, and sweet Its shadow lay on my heart. I thought I saw on the clover A brown bee pulling apart The closed flesh of the clover And burrowing in its heart. She moved her hand, and again I felt the brown bird hover Over my heart ... and then The bird came down on my heart, As on a nest the rover Cuckoo comes, and shoves over The brim each careful part Of love, takes possession and settles her down, With her wings and her feathers does drown The nest in a heat of love. She turned her flushed face to me for the glint Of a moment. 'See,' she laughed, 'if you also Can make them yawn.' I put my hand to the dint In the flower's throat, and the flower gaped wide with woe. She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still, She watched my hand, and I let her watch her fill. I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs Poised at her: like a weapon my hand stood white and keen, And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs Of mordant anguish till she ceased to laugh, Until her pride's flag, smitten, cleaved down to the staff.