THE HUMMINGBIRD
     (For Sylvia Plath)

You say it did not happen.
Do not say so. I am cold still
From the sudden impress

Of those feet.
I did not see the arrival.
A glacial pricking of the nerves,

I thought, something wrong
In the ganglia. I looked then
At the spruce, enamelled thing.

Mulberry-stained threads
Splayed for hold, its feet clung
To the roughened forearm hair

Chill as a child's
Passionless mouth against burnt
Skin on a hot day.

I would have shaken it off
But for the suddenly slashed throat
And stern jut of the face

A little too hooked and troll-like
For its kind. What arrested me more
Were the bright, incurious eyes

That took me in, unseeing,
Inspected me from another dimension
Or all dimensions together

In masking planes of vision.
I am not mystical: yet a formal, icy
Air of visitation prevailed.

Being so audited by so nuncial
A gaze was terribly discomfiting.
One does not trifle with emissaries

From another country
When that country's business concerns
Another world.

I did not see the wings:
No coverts flared, no shimmering vanes
Let down to sign

A malachitic angel:
Only its breastwork was agleam
With ranking gold.

It is such a shrewd shape, so utile.
It's a little coat pin,
A clever cleat for a kerchief.

You should have seen.
It lifted straight up, swerved round,
Backed air at the woodbine,

And was gone.
You are right. I am only a landing place
For implausible ideas,

A crazy strip in a clearing
In a confusing wood. But do not say
It did not happen.

My arm is knotted still
From that cold coral. I know. It meant
Nothing. Yet it was there.