Death of the Bird

For every bird there is this last migration;

Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;

With a warm passage to the summer station

Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.

Year after year a speck on the map, divided

By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;

Season after season, sure and safely guided,

Going away she is also coming home.

And being home, memory becomes a passion

With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,

Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession

And exiled love mourning within the breast.

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;

The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;

Down the long architrave of temple or palace

Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;

That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,

Custom and fear constraining her no longer,

Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,

Single and frail, uncertain of her place,

Alone in the bright host of her companions,

Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.

She feels it close now, the appointed season;

The invisible thread is broken as she flies;

Suddenly, without warning, without reason,

The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.

Try as she will, the trackless world delivers

No way, the wilderness of light no sign;

Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers

Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.

The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,

And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,

And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,

Receives the tiny burden of her death.

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Poems in English 

• Robert Burns: Anna, Thy Charms: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: To Alex. Cunningham, ESQ., Writer: Ellisland, Nithsdale, July 27th, 1788. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Lines Written In Friars’-Carse Hermitage: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: I Hae a Wife O’ My Ain: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Of A’ The Airts The Wind Can Blaw: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epistle To Hugh Parker: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Chevalier’s Lament: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Verses To Clarinda: Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Bonie Lad That’s Far Awa: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Winter It Is Past: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: To Daunton Me: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Talk Of Him That’s Far Awa: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Lad They Ca’Jumpin John: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Duncan Davison : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Hey, The Dusty Miller: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: How Long And Dreary Is The Night : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Up In The Morning Early: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Up In The Morning Early: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Verses To Clarinda: Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Bonie Lad That’s Far Awa: by Robert Burns

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Search engines:

Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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