A dark world, of stench and cramp, of scramble,
up in the acute angle of the gable wall,
the jutting roof in its occlusion dumping dark
on dark; and then the beaks, yellow and livid

and big almost as the bone-fluff bodies, the blind
struggling for space, the crush and yawp for insects
to be stuffed in the gawping maws from above; until

that death of sorts, the adults urging, and the young
swifts were out and tumbling, sickeningly, down; but
something in their being bloomed and there, suddenly,

was the whole unforeseeable earth and unrestricted sky,
the brash exultant rush of the body in instant mastery
of the elements, those spacious meadows of the air,
cloud-suffused blue fields, the azure pasture-lands.