<poem>
The Phoenix, sweet-singing bird, known across the world
made homeless by gusts of cold wind
sits, alone, on
a stalk of bamboo
The other birds gather around him on every branch
He composes lost laments
from the tatterd shreds of a thousand distant voices,
in clouds like a dark line on mountain,
the wall of an imaginary edifice, he
builds
Ever since the yellow of the sun upon the waves
faded away, and the jackal's howl
rang out over the shore, and peasant
lit a hidden light in his home,
his eyes reflect red in his home,
draws a line under night's two eild eyes
and at far off points
people pass by
The bird, that rare song, hidden as he is
rises from where he is perched
through things tangled up
with the light and dark of this long night
he
passes
A flame out ahead, he
sees
In a place without plants, without air,
the stubborn sun breaks on the rocks,
land and life are nothing special here.
he senses that the hopes of birds like him
are dark as smoke, even if some of their dreams
are like a harvest of fire
sparkling in the eye and in their shite morning.
he senses that if his life
passed by like other birds
in sleeping and eating
it would be an unnameable pain
The first part of the final stanza reads,
That mellifluous bird
in that place glorifield by fire—
now turned into a hel—
keeps blinking, his sharp eyes,
darting around,
and from over the hill,
suddenly, he unfurls and flaps his wings
from the depths of his heart he lets out a cry, burning and bitter
its meaning unknoen to other passing birds.
Then, drunk from his invisible pain
[the Phoenix] throws himselsf on the awesome fire.
A violent wind blows, and the bird is burned up.
The ashes of his body are collected up,
his chicks take flight from the heart of his ashes
<poem>
