Billy Collins
“A Question About Birds”
Horoscopes for the Dead
This is the concluding stanza:
Or is that nervous chittering
I often hear from the upper branches
the sound of some tireless little translator?
I admire the alliteration in that epithet the “tireless little translator”. The poem’s speaker raises a very interesting question as to whether birds understand each other across species. I suspect warning cries carry over but mating calls might not. : )
And so for day 2962
20.01.2015