Birds of Passage

Do migratory birds feel pain before departure, as we do?
(Eleni Fourtouni - Greek poet)
               

They are like us: uneasy in their hearts,
knowing the glowing season cannot last;

sensing the small imperatives of temperature,
subtle fibrillations of the air,

flexing their will, their wings grown summer-tender,
resisting the nostalgic pull of place

where they cannot remain.
All earth’s creatures feel this kind of pain.
…
 
I sense that you imagine
us as brave: perhaps we are,
insofar as courage can
distinguish between death and flight;

an even greater irony,
you look on us as free,
as if we could defy our DNA,
or swim against the stars.
…

We leave the nests we built
with skill and care, to last a year;
when we return, the trees
may not be there.

Yet, fewer every year, we face
the same involuntary ordeal:
the maze of air, sea’s blinding wastes,
the labyrinth of guns and gales,
until no nests remain,
and no more song.
…
 
There will be no more
silhouettes of trees, their gentle presences
gracing walled cities, gardens of the dead
with domes of pine and spires of cypresses.

Mountains will bare their teeth in grimaces
where groves of beech and oak and spruce took root,
and birds will cry in warning and lament   
circling the void where forest stood.

Greentime myths and songs
will echo winds embracing leaves,   
spirits of the murdered trees, earth’s requiem.    
…

Fleetingly inscribed across the sky
a wind-blown line of birds,
scribbling a message as they fly…