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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Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Poems in English 

• Robert Burns: Come, Let Me Take Thee To My Breast: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Phillis The Queen O’ The Fair: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: By Allan Stream: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Had I A Cave: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Phillis The Fair: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epigram On The Laird Of Laggan: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epigrams Against The Earl Of Galloway: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epitaph On A Lap-Dog Named Echo: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Bonie Jean-A Ballad: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: O Were My Love Yon Lilac Fair: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Blythe Hae I been On Yon Hill: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Logan Braes: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Last Time I Came O’er The Moor: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Impromptu On General Dumourier’s Desertion From The French Republican Army: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Grace Before And After Meat : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Grace After Meat: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Extempore Reply To An Invitation: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Kirk and State Excisemen: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Raptures Of Folly: by Robert Burns

More external links (open in a new tab):

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Doska or the Board – write anything

Search engines:

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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