Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself Ned Rorem

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 knowlеdge of reality