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: To A Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: To Mr. M’Adam, Of Craigen-Gillan: In answer to an obliging Letter he sent in the commencement of my poetic career. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: To John Kennedy, Dumfries House: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Inventory: In answer to a mandate by the Surveyor of the Taxes by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Address To The Unco Guid, Or The Rigidly Righteous: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Here’s His Health In Water : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Rantin’ Dog, The Daddie O’t: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Vision: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epistle To James Smith: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Ordination : For sense they little owe to frugal Heav’n- To please the mob, they hide the little giv’n. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Author’s Earnest Cry And Prayer: To the Right Honourable and Honourable Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Twa Dogs: A Tale by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Auld Farmer’s New-Year-Morning Salutation To His Auld Mare, Maggie: On giving her the accustomed ripp of corn to hansel in the New Year. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Scotch Drink : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Address To The Deil: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Cotter’s Saturday Night: Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq., of Ayr. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Merry Hae I Been Teethin A Heckle: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: For A’ That: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Jolly Beggars: A Cantata: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Adam Armour’s Prayer: by Robert Burns

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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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