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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External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Poems in English 

• Robert Burns: Scroggam, My Dearie: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: When She Cam’ Ben She Bobbed : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Weary Pund O’ Tow: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Lines On Fergusson, The Poet : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: I do Confess Thou Art Sae Fair: Alteration of an Old Poem. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: My Native Land Sae Far Awa: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Thou Gloomy December : by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Behold The Hour, The Boat, Arrive: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Ae Fond Kiss, And Then We Sever: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: O May, Thy Morn: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: A Grace After Dinner, Extempore: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: A Grace Before Dinner, Extempore: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Keekin’-Glass: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Divine Service In The Kirk Of Lamington: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Toadeater: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Poem On Sensibility: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: The Song Of Death: Scene-A Field of Battle. Time of the day-evening. The wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in the following song. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Second Epistle To Robert Graham, ESQ., Of Fintry: by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: Epistle To John Maxwell, ESQ., Of Terraughty : On His Birthday. by Robert Burns
• Robert Burns: O Kenmure’s On And Awa, Willie: by Robert Burns

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

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Doska or the Board – write anything

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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