James Dickey - At Darien Bridge lyrics

The sea here used to look As if many convicts had built it, Standing deep in their ankle chains, Ankle-deep in the water, to smite The land and break it down to salt. I was in this bog as a child When they were all working all day To drive the pilings down. I thought I saw the still sun Strike the side of a hammer in flight And from it a sea bird be born To take off over the marshes. As the gray climbs the side of my head And cuts my brain off from the world, I walk and wish mainly for birds, For the one bird no one has looked for To spring again from a flash Of metal, perhaps from the scratched Wedding band on my ring finger. Recalling the chains of their feet, I stand and look out over gra**es At the bridge they built, long abandoned, Breaking down into water at last, And long, like them, for freedom Or d**h, or to believe again That they worked on the ocean to give it The unchanging, hopeless look Out of which all miracles leap.