Words and Beyond
Now there's this luminous cloud
of thrushes chattering by our window
on the random boughs of the small shrubbery
that runs along the yard wall,
thrushes - we say at lunch- in between
this and that- that weren't here
last year, not exactly here, and not so many,
their busy interweaving lines
so thoroughly interspersed with our words.
They keep singing, with noon fullness.
And we forget them, taken by the usual
assessment of our daily chores.
Back in my room I hear the muffled
call of pigeons and gazing out of the window
I see one, neck swollen, tackling its mate
with the tick- tick of a winding walk
and the fast head's rhythm backwards and forwards.
I gaze at the mellow bounty of neck plumes,
at their greys, violets and blues,
their fullness at one with its encased sound.
On bricks and tiles that for ages
have been reverberating with birdsong
so there's no real knowledge of silence,
and there is the certainty that these calls
will persist enveloping our walls,
and when we lose our words
and are scraps of desire to weave,
they'll carry us forward.
