If It Were Spring

If it were Spring
and I killed a man,
I would change him to leaves
and hang him from a tree,

a tree in a grove
at the edge of a dune,
where small beasts came
to flee the sun.

Wind would make him
part of song,
and rain would cling
like tiny crystal worlds

upon his branch
of leaf-green skies,
and he would bear the dance
of fragile bone,

brush of wings
against his maps of arteries,
and turn up a yellow-stomached flag
to herald the touring storm.

o my victim,
ou would grow your season
as I grew mine,
under the spell of growth,

an instrument
of the blue sky,
an instrument of the sun,
a palm above the dark, splendid eyes.

What language the city will hear
because of your death,
anguish explain,
sorrow relieve.

Everywhere I see
the world waiting you,
the pens raised, walls prepared,
hands hung above the strings and keys.

And come Autumn
I will spin a net
between your height and earth
to hold your crisp parts.

In the fields and orchards
it must be turning Spring,
look at the faces
clustered around mine.

And I hear
the irrefutable argument of hunger
whispered, spoken, shouted,
but never sung.

I will kill a man this week;
before this week is gone
I will hang him to a tree,
I will see this mercy done.