My Only Gift

Being a pauper born to shift alone,

Capriciously allured by every gust

That rattles leaves across a cobblestone,

Obsessed by connotations in their rust;

And being compelled, from lack of kinder fire,

To chafe my fingers at a travelling moon

And stretch my sleeping to a bed of briar,

Dawn shuttling not too early nor too soon -

And with less mansion than a spider boasts

To thread translucent tapestries along -

I offer you, as refuge from dark hosts,

My only gift, and that essential song:

A heart a little bruised from loneliness

And like a wounded lark for timidness.