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Sport 24: Summer 2000

The song is a cage in which the bird is sung

page 12

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.