Waxwings Flew in Philadelphia

Friendly voices, dead and gone,
Singing Star of the County Down
Even the ghosts help raise the barn
There now in my hometown

When out of the massing that bodes in the cold west
Flew a waxwing who froze and died against my breast
And all the while, rain like a weed in the tide,
Swans and lists down on the gossiping lawns
Saying "tsk tsk tsk"

I may have changed, it's hard to gauge
Time won't account for how I've aged
Would I could tie your lying tongue
Who says that leaving keeps you young

To cast myself out over the water
Riven like a wishbone
Not naturally given to roam
I will lay low when I return
And move like a gurney
Whose wheels are squeaking

I laugh when you speak of my pleasure-seeking
Among the tall pines, along the lay-lines
Here where the loon keens
Here where the moon leans
Here where I know my violent love lays
Down in a row of silent, dove-gray days

But time marches on.

Adapted with some slight alterations from poem by Joanna Newsom