OR CARE IN THE COMMUNITY


People new to the neighbourhood soon notice,

rising from one of the walled gardens

or the terraced yards, an occasional

bird call – wood pigeon or even cuckoo?

Distracted by the previous owners’ always

doubtful detritus, it takes them longer

to realise the sounds are human though

of indeterminate age and gender.

Exchanging a Victorian madhouse

for a gentrified Victorian suburb,

making ambiguous bird noises rather

than rocking to and fro in the urine-stink

must be better – but no less sad, no more

purposeful, still unconscionable.

almost as soon  as you had filled the small bird feeders

under the pine and come inside, the big beasts land

to eat the scattered seeds – three wood pigeons, two turtle doves

and a solitary magpie -  then a cat appear, the birds scramble

and you again, shooing.

From where the hawk stoops, I heard the magpie’s

irrelevant chatterings, saw a tableau of live flesh;

saw our Victorian suburb from where the airplane flies -

heard nothing above the thrumming of the engines;

from beyond the stratosphere, saw somewhere

still not yet silenced by the enveloping yellow

of the Sahara or the Arctic’s melting blue.

From the long window, I heard the next track begin -

late Billie Holiday, ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek’ -

heard her miss the key change yet again, promised myself

never to play it yet again.

The Dodo, Ustad Mansur, Agra, 1610

 

 

 

For Sarah:  always a conservationist, latterly a twitcher.

                                 i

In Umbria – the cuore verde of pristine, wooded hills,

Orvieto’s honey-pale wines,

the paintings of Perugino and Pisano,

the Tiber’s milky jade,

tartufo nero -

they stew thrush.

                                 ii

At least once in our suburban garden,

house sparrow, green finch, ring-necked dove, wren,

jay, wood pigeon, robin, starling,  swift,  jackdaw, blue tit,

magpie,  blackbird, sparrowhawk, chaffinch, swallow,

gold crest, bull  finch, great tit, hen harrier, mistle thrush

have, variously, courted, mated, nested, birthed, ate, shat,  killed, 

bobbed, waddled, hopped, walked, pecked, fluttered, shrieked, 

whistled, warbled, squawked and died.

                                iii

But, above all, sang – that esoteric music,

rich and varied as their plumage:

untutored, uncultivated, unstinting.

                                iv

Though only crows circle St. Francis’ basilica,

in Cheshire ostriches are farmed.

How accidents of diet, doctrine, sentiment and flag

determine extinction!