Suddenly someone twenty stories up

Flung out a fabric, scarlet, gold, and green,

Downward past seven sills, or maybe ten

I marvelled at what the flying cloth might mean.

Birds frightened from every cornice rose,

Cloudy and strangely troubled in the air.

Opposite on the walls such colors flowed,

Others beside myself could only stare.

Sunlight, if any lit that narrow street,

Flashed like a waterfall in wind, but red

Flecked so with gold, so laced with gold and green,

It was that glimmering windy cloth instead.

Vivid the air above me swayed and shone -

Birds were fronds of an underwater tree -

Till with the great banner booming as it rolled,

I walked as if I swam beneath the sea.

Breathless I saw it in a gust go up,

And the birds rush, and the light leap, and then

I almost rose through water toward the air.

I never found that narrow street again.