Death of the Bird

For every bird there is this last migration;

Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;

With a warm passage to the summer station

Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided

By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;

Season after season, sure and safely guided,

Going away she is also coming home.

And being home, memory becomes a passion

With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,

Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession

And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;

The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;

Down the long architrave of temple or palace

Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;

That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,

Custom and fear constraining her no longer,

Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,

Single and frail, uncertain of her place,

Alone in the bright host of her companions,

Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.

She feels it close now, the appointed season;

The invisible thread is broken as she flies;

Suddenly, without warning, without reason,

The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will, the trackless world delivers

No way, the wilderness of light no sign;

Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers

Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.

The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,

And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,

And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,

Receives the tiny burden of her death.

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External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• Crowdie ever mair (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Inscription to Chloris by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Yonder pomp of costly fashion (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• My Spouse Nancy by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Forlorn, my love, no comfort here (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Behold the hour by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• On Chloris being ill (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• How cruel are the parents by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Had I a cave by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Craigieburn Wood by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Poem on Pastoral Poetry by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Lines of John M’Murdo by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Inscription for an Alter of Independence by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Epitaph on a Lap-dog by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Epigram on Miss Davies by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Out over the Forth (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• O aye my wife she dang me (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns
• Hey, the Dusty Miller (Song) by Robert Burns by Robert Burns

More external links (open in a new tab):

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Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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