A blackbird in a silver birch
Carols loudly. In pre-dawn haze
And evening gloaming, his clear song
Like dropping water from his perch
Sprinkles the garden’s crowding baize
Purifying its blood and dung.
Chattering,
the bright-eyed sparrow
And
stiff-legged starlings, richly pompous, Have franchise on the streets and harrow
Fiercely for scraps; and through the day
Pigeon and bold robins make rumpus
In the gardens: it’s dawn and narrow
Twilight that the blackbird holds sway.
At
four o’morn the light is brown,
The
grinning fox and rats retreat; At once the blackbird buffs his crown
With many-fluted thrills of sound;
And later in the day’s-end heat
He’ll treble in his cantor’s gown
Till dusk dies of a blood-red wound.
This
longest day and shallow night,
These
blackbird’s tuned intricaciesEmbody health which salves the bite
Of the fox’s bloodied tooth; but come
December with its frozen leaves,
The blackbird’s song in blackest night
Will choke, struck down by the wind’s drum.
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©
June 2013