IMAGE IN A CEDAR TREE

Birds in the cedar, fluttering without a song:
early-lilting love and its philosophy
silently trail delicate aged wings among
the green December chapels of their cedar-tree.

The minaret, many-laced-and-leafed, the painted	age,
is not more whole and wasted more contained a thing:
not here, not still, among the stone and the foliage,
is there a structure to shed leaves, be shared, or sing.

What should the cedar sing?  Oh dumb brown throats,
oh airless wings, what ecstasy works unheard
now nothing is left wiser than the power of thoughts,
nor love beyond the singing of a bird?