For Barbara.
“I wonder where the mockingbird is from, and where it went.” You said.
You’re Job, I said, when Yahweh sphinxes him for fun.
You said “It came a second night but then last night was gone.”
Job blanked, I said, on when the mountain-goats give birth,
He blanked on where Leviathans cross seas,
He blanked on why the wind both woos and kills.
You said: “It sang beside our bed two nights, not three. Not three.”
I said I can’t explain antiphony,
it seems its own reward
and when the bird has said “amen”
another sound insults the word.