perhaps it was the wrong bird one heard cawking
among the trees, those magpies with their black and
white wings, so clustered around the page that they
had trapped in daylight, its wise back crouched against
the inner bark, tearing its feathers to shreds, perhaps
it was the wrong bird, perhaps it was the blackbird, singing
its enchantments at the gateway, at twilight,
the first stars appearing in the sky, at the entrance
to an enchanted cave or the threshold to another
world, the haunting soulsong, of which it is said
that to eat one of the eggs of a blackbird made
a human being winged, though it is also the bird
of the fire, the metalworker's bird, in the smith of the work,
that bird which wakes the dead and lulls the living to sleep,
particularly those who are sick or wounded, healing them
with sweetest music and berries from the rowan tree