Ciconia ciconia

 

 

Such jazzy arrhythmia,

the white storks'

Plosive and gorgeous leave-takings suggest

Oracular utterance where the blurred

Danube disperses its silts.

Then the red-

Billed, red-legged creatures begin to spiral,

To float among thermals like the souls, wrote

Pythagoras, praising the expansive

Grandeur of black-tipped wings, of dead poets.

Most Eastern cultures would not allow them

To be struck, not with slung stone or arrow

Or, later, lead bullet-

birds who have learned,

While living, to keep their songs to themselves,

Who return to nests used for centuries,

Nests built on rooftops, haystacks, telegraph

Poles, on wooden wagon wheels placed on cold

Chimneys by peasants who hoped to draw down

Upon plague-struck villages such winged luck.

 

If the body in its failure remains

A nest, if the soul chooses to return...

 

Yet not one stork has been born in Britain

Since 1416, the last nest renounced

When Julian of Norwich, anchoress,

Having exhausted all revelations,

Took earthly dispensation, that final

Stork assuring, even while vanishing,

"Sin is behovely, but all shall be well."