Читать книгу Undying - Michel Faber - Страница 9

Old Bird, Not Very Well

By the side of the road she stands:

old bird, not very well.

Will she cross? – Yes, perhaps,

in a bit, when the tiredness

passes.

I walk as if on eggshell,

to delay the flit of her wings.

But closer by, step by step, then eye to eye,

I see there will be no such thing.

This bird is waiting

patiently to die.

I am in awe of seeing a bird like this,

standing upright in extremis.

We think of birds in two states only:

dead already; death-defying.

Feathered carnage, or still flying.

Finding her, I know I’ve stumbled

on a moment in a million:

a moment even ornithologists

may never witness:

an old bird, on the point of dying.

Humbled, I intrude on her distress,

her mute, attentive helplessness.

I sit with her a while,

a hundred times her size.

My shoe-heel comes to rest

inches from her breathing breast.

My shadow lassos her personal space:

all that remains of her domain.

Yesterday, the unbounded sky; today

only a fringe of dirt

for massive cars to pass.

One loose feather, scarcely bigger than her eye,

flaps, passive, as they rustle by.

She keeps eerily still,

on the very edge

of no longer being a sparrow.

On the brink

of no longer thinking

birdy thoughts.