the songs of birds are common
in suburbia among
the sameness and
homogeneity which are
the defining features and
central symbol of our
contemporary culture
which confirms
something told to me long ago
that the cardinal’s song
sounds like the tapping
together of two nickels

the irony of this image
brings to mind when
wordsworth was greeted
at twilight
by a qwire of redbreasts
announcing the coming of winter
it was here at the beginning
of his trip to london that he
decided to join the birds
in winter’s service
for it was in fear of such
a winter that wordsworth
amid a sea of revolution
from the democratic
and industrial to the
spiritual and philosophic
ushered in the modern age
with his own poetic revolution
which would reach its apex
with an ode about a nightingale

i’ve never lived in the city
not for any period of time
not deep in the city where
the concrete steel and
reflective glass
where the chaos and clamor
covered with paper scraps
and a residue of grime
constitute a forest of grey
as in winter long after
the colors of autumn
have fallen to the ground
where sirens and squeaky brakes
take the place of the singing of birds

and yet there is no drowning
out of songs but rather
an incessant droning amid the din
that fills the silences left by the
conspicuous absence of song
which is likely due to the lack
of birds except of course for pigeons
whose coo can hardly count for song

it is here at the supposed center
of modern life in the mighty heart
of the city where winter takes its hold
on the weariness fever and fret
and leaves a drowsy numbness
where death pervades the shadows
a constant subtext of city life
and if there were any songs
it would seem that the nightingale
had somehow been replaced
by the blackbird
and so rather than the song
causing the poet to fall in love
with easeful death it has instead
become the pantomime
the undiscovered country
of death itself

but now we need another bird
since the blackbird’s circles
and innuendoes have come to represent
a truth we can no longer acknowledge
we could turn to rilke’s swan
but he is without song
unless you count the swan
they call the trumpeter
but then we might just as well
go with harrison’s buzzards
whose cries awoke the poet
from his dreams on keats’s early death
and yet if music is the aim
we would be better to choose
the goose whose seasonal song
sounds from overhead like
sixth grade saxophone practice

and so we’re left to go bird by bird
but it is much more likely
that each of these birds
from the nightingale to
the blackbird from the eagle
to the sparrow from the buzzard
to the swan from the parrot
to the mockingbird they
are all just lovely reminders
with their varying degrees
of beauty and of truth
of a happier time long past