Property of Pigeons
by Mina Loy
Pigeons doze,
or rouse
their striped crescendos
of grey rainbow
a living frieze on the shallow
sill of a factory window.
Pigeons arise
alight
on vertical bases
of civic brick
whitened with avalanches
of their innocent excrements
as if an angel had been sick;
all that is shown to us
of bird-economies,
financeless,
inobvious as the disposal
of their corpses.
Pigeons make irritant, alluring
music;
quilled solfeggios
of shrill wings winnowing
their rejoicing, cooing
fanaticism for wooing.
Their dolce voices
dotage.
Too and fro, frowardly they live
burnishing each other’s
gorgeous halters
in the feathery drive
of preliminaries
to their marriages.
Pigeons disappear,
their claws, a coral landing-gear,
dive for the altar-stair
to their privacies
a slice of concrete
fallen on a cornice
leading into darkness;
the slit adjacence of houses
where the careesive dusts,
the residue of furnaces
upholster the gossamer
festoons of intestate spiers
for nuptial furniture
Pigeons through some conjurous procedure
appear to reappear
upon the altar-stair
at startling instants
in the immature
torsos of their giant infants;
timid and unflown
stark of plume
naive in nativity
to peer into a vast transparency.