Sport 24: Summer 2000
The song is a cage in which the bird is sung
The song is a cage in which the bird is sung
Desperate thing, desirable
thing, where ‘man's mounting spirit
in his bone house, mean house
dwells’, the song or soul a wooden skiff
rowed back up
the sky, or one of those
mechanical exactnesses:
Taranaki Lovebirds above a New Plymouth
lawn. All wire and fluorescent
paint. Beyond the cloud-high cages
a dawn chorus of cottages—
visiting hour on the orderly
hospital lawn
where, like clockwork, the gulls
would appear
each afternoon. ‘The visitors’,
the superintendent called them
as each day at closing time they flew
to his daughters
there on the calm lawn, the quick
lawn, a green handkerchief
on which, if only, tears might awaken
and take flight.