The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Six Movements
Birds aren't people one has to walk to:
Stay where you are, they'll come to you, talk too.
What's in gadding in search of a neighbour
Far too much distance, much too much labour.
Chat about trifles, argue a season:
Surely you'll find no roots to grow trees on?
The dark, steep, long way back—is it longer?
Wits any wiser, legs any stronger?
Sit them right here in this very place, swayed
By idleness eyeing a fiery parade
Of robins, swallows, thrushes, sparrows,
Coming like lightning, going like arrows.
HERMIT THRUSH
It's hard to count what an air can do:
It cannot buy one a shirt or shoe:
It cannot bind a neat nest; find things
For leaving the earth on floating wings:
Nothing of twigs in it, nothing of roots;
But something of rivers, a little of flutes
That I've heard rippling a bodiless tune
That caught me up in a small balloon,
And took me high without writing a check;
And let me down without breaking my neck:
No effort at all: I was absent-minded:
Don't even know now what the air or the wind did.
ROBIN
He takes a lot of staccato steps, stops—
Like a busy toe-dancer with dizzy tops
That never cease spinning, twinkling a minute
Until they come to the end of what's in it.
He runs on a line like a tight-rope walker—
Tries not to look scared—nor to answer a talker.
He might be as deaf as a man who surveys
Two spots with a string for the high wire ways.
No matter how fast he may go or stop dead—
He holds his head still—an oblivious head
But just down below, they twist and they squirm—
Like a terrified crowd or an angle worm.
CITY CHAP
Who's that dusty stranger?—What's he doing here?—
That city-bred bird with the ill-bred leer?—
Perching on branches like telegraph wires?—
Chirping his slang above passionate fires?—
Poking his head about, twitching his tail?—
Getting drunk in our pools as though they were ale?—
Never accepting, but stealing our rations?—
Acting toward us as he would to relations?—
Who asked him hither, what led him this way?—
With his critical carping, his mockery, eh?—
And worse than all these, he's a jerky reminder
Of winters, towns, and of people no kinder.
SWALLOWS
Theyre not going travelling for many a day:
They don't attempt branches, they seek it in clay:
First they start holes, and then dig in hollows:
Excavate caverns to lay future swallows:
A gray, crumbling chapel, best for the landing:
Too old for man—not too old to be standing:
A home no one visits, come west or come east,
Unless he be harmless, some hermit or priest,
Who walks in a plot shaded green, an arena
Between pater noster and ave maria.
If he should lift eyes and see birds, the chance is:
He'll be but a lover: another St Francis.
SONG SPARROW
He stutters and stammers—a catch in his throat—
Chromatics falter—too many notes float—
Beginnings too eager—scales all uncertain—
Come to a cadence, too careful the curtain.
The thing that he studies—flattering, fluttering—
Might be called song could the fellow but sing
From the start of a phrase to the end of a sentence,
And not be pursued and be caught by repentance.
Who would consider such doings professional?—
The little he does, does it sound processional?—
And still, he persists and resists till he find
A channel for opening the way to his mind.