what the birds know
balanced on the wrestle and tug of the wind
they study the spanless space of the Severn
2
knowing – as we will never know – this place
where the land ends, where the footholds loosen
2
feeling that oily mud-grey glide, sensing
that treachery which hides a deeper pull, a drowning
2
smelling the distant shock of salt and the dank of
knotted things decaying at the river’s edge
2
hearing the Severn-silence – that sound which is nothing more
than the blur of the wind
2
seeing how its silver spread pulls the land lopsided
lowers the sky, turns to smallness the trinkets of men
2
as they fringe the fragile banks -quays, power stations
pylons, looping bridges, trees, even the blind toy train
2
bumbling along its perilous shelf – all slope and cling
drawn towards those eel-backed, mud flats
2
all this the birds see and so worship the will of the Severn
pay tribute to this indifferent god
2
aware how small, how short the time
but cheerful in their insignificance
2
as through the years they watch the river work
slow and steady, infinitely sure, reclaiming
2
its space and – undeceived – they scream
their strangled warnings into deafness
2
deep as the sky
