Work Text:
The blue bird sings, its little eye a spot of coal, its little breast awash with sunset, and even its song rendered in thread. The blue bird believes that the world is caught in springtime eternally. It is, in its way, a foolish bird. It knows neither full-grown cat nor cruel-eyed hunter. In the young branches, it teaches its mate to hope.
Oh, blue-eyed boy, who are you? You look like my sweet, but you are younger than he will ever be again. Who is your flock, where are your wings? Can you fly up the mountain before the snow falls?
The brook babbles on. The deer o’er-leaps it. Here is its dainty hoof. Here is its proud neck. Here is its horn of bone. The deer does not want to wait for another way.
If you keep going, my little one, you will go round the edge of the world. The world will be like a platter, edged rather than infinite. You will fall.
(The needle falls.)
Oh, my baby, my bright-hearted baby. Leave a little heart for me—can you not? I cannot live long, with my heart outside my body.
All of the black and white threads, all of the scarlet and gold. All of the long and the short, all of the fine and the coarse, sing all the day, scry all the day.
Into the mirror we go. Into the lilies and mud. This is the lake, you sad, sad boy. This is the lake in winter.
When sold, the works are ruined: their prophesies excised and forgotten by the vulgarity of money changing hands. Happiness, if found, would be a room to turn about in. A room without a door. Each tapestry hanging from its own wall, lit from a window above. Each in order, each in color, each telling its own past and future, round and round.
I don’t want to die.
A little blood leaves a great stain. A little water changes the powder of a dye to something that can last forever. It is all a question of knowledge: the power to make knowledge out of nothing but an idea and fragments of silk.
Are you going to love him well enough, daughter-not-mine? Are you going to love him forever? You answer me too quickly. You answer not at all.
The roses bloom. The roses are many in number. The roses are stitched of every hue. It is one of the finest thus far, and so it is not sold, no matter how hard times fall upon the world and its little creators.
Shuttle and thread, warp and weft. Weep and weep.
Your family is gone, my love. Why do you still call for them? Why do you always bleed?
I don’t know, he answers you. This is the one who comes back. This is the one who wakens to your touch. I don’t know, Grandmother.
He has your eyes. You’ve seen them in the mirror, and when you are asleep.