Gulls

Good Dr. Brown, he fell in love with a girl with sleeves of such rosy silk
But her dark eyes roved away, away like the soaring gulls on the wine-dark sea
One night he begged she be his bride but she said, “No, it can not be.
Just like the gulls, with their hungry cries
I love you less than the wine-dark tide.”

How he did brood on such cruel words and those rosy sleeves of shining silk
Then he took a rock and threw it high
And knocked a gull from the wine-dark sky

In twilight dusk, in a black eel ditch, the doctor burned wormwood and pitch
And with a fist of graveyard dirt he begged the night for that wine-dark heart
There she came with those rosy sleeves to touch his lips with such a wine-dark kiss
His black top hat to the breeze it went and his flapping arms grew feathered thick
His face it stretched to a sharpened beak
And how he screeched to feel the wine-dark wind
But though he flapped and fought to fly those rosy sleeves held him, oh, so tight