Mary MacRae
Bejing Birds
I’d thought all the sparrows were dead,
seen them in a photo, hung up
in bunches, like tiny blackened
bananas. The Great Leap Forward.
Surprising to hear them this morning
sliding and squabbling in the dust.
The children in the schoolyard dust
shout like sparrows; you’d think the dead
sooty drifts would muffle morning
sounds, like grimy snow blown up
in winter, backward and forward
over the pavements, cracked, blackened.
Hanging from plane trees in blackened
cages, canaries peck the dust
and sing, undimmed, pressed forward,
throat taut, shrill enough for the dead
named on temple stele to wake up,
thaw in the warmth of the morning.
The temple doves, in pairs this morning,
chat companionably, eat blackened
buds in the cypresses, reach up
for more, their soft and grey as dust
breasts pressed on the dark ridged bark, dead-
head small sprays of cones, bent forward.
Air displayed, displaced, fast forward
in arrow formation, mourning
daylight, loss, all the voiceless dead,
pigeons call and skim the blackened
shadows. Cutting the grainy dust-
filled air, they brush the roof, then up,
wind against resistant feathers, up-
tipped in giddying spin, forward
and round again, raising the dust
in ancient trees where, since morning,
long-tailed doves cooed and flopped, blackened
shapes now, sleeping two by two. Dead
hush; but from windows, eaves, up dead-
looking dusty trees, in blackened
streets, Beijing birds sing at morning.
 |
Page(s) 47
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The