THE BLACKBIRD REPLIES

He cocks his head on one side,
An old man listening to a child.

Or a terrier tensed for the rabbit
To leap into daylight
Just ahead of the ferret.

Silent as a cheese-taster
Listening to the taste of the cheese.

Or the off-duty seismologist
In the roar of Los Angeles,
Gauging his underground feeling.

A G.P. listening again to the body
Articulating its complex pathology
In baby language.

Not an anthropologist
Interrogating a shaman,
But the shaman
Replacing his ears with the wind.

Mozart on a visit to Leipzig,
Listening to Bach for the first time.

Thin from the larynx
Of exhausted mines,
The seed of a sound,
‘Passchaendaele, Auschwitz, Soham,’
The earth sighs

And
“Peace! Peace! Peace! Peace! Peace! Peace!”
The blackbird replies.