Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind. 

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind. 

The sun was rising at six, 
No longer a battered panache above snow… 
It would have been outside. 

It was not from the vast ventriloquism 
Of sleep’s faded papier-mache… 
The sun was coming from the outside. 

That scrawny cry—It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun, 

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.