The partridge, the russet bird,
lies gently on the cutting board
between the blue bowl
and the sea-green decanter.
And a young girl is singing,
"A partridge in a pear tree,"
adding in a free contralto
all those increments that return
always to the partridge in
the pear tree. Perhaps she has
only now turned from the mirror
or put her diary aside,
roused unknowing by a second life
she has received from the russet bird.
It is like some genre painting
come alive with a touch of blood.
I note this without irony,
and I intend no danger.
One tress hanging down,
she bends over it as over
a baby she is going to powder.
I do not know for certain
that she is serenading the bird,
or why our spreading increments,
like a pear tree of winter,
retrace, between a bowl of one color
and a decanter of another,
the crooked steps to the russet root,
while somewhere a free contralto,
perched with two lives in an auburn tress,
clothes the tree with populous song
 
 — as I am here in a winter scene
reasoning and yet with delight,
my voice, beyond me, conjoining
with hers in the floating air;
and it is sweet to be
the bright cold sky
in winter time and any time,
and all the snow that lies between,
and the partridge and the pear tree.