What I Saw

by Robert Duncan

The white peacock roosting
might have been Christ,

           featherd robe of Osiris,


the radiant bird, a sword-flash,

           percht in the tree

and the other,        the fumed-glass slide

     —were like night and day,


the slit of an eye opening in

           time

vertical to the horizon

Source: Bending the Bow (1968)