sparrows

15d

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy…

—Norman MacCaig, “Sparrow”
published in The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon, 2010)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-many-days/

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Sparrow
by Norman MacCaig

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy.
And his nest – that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak,
would call it a slum.

To stalk solitary on lawns,
to sing solitary in midnight trees,
to glide solitary over gray Atlantics –
not for him: he’d rather
a punch-up in a gutter.

He carries what learning he has
lightly – it is, in fact, based only
on the usefulness whose result
is survival. A proletarian bird.
No scholar.
But when winter soft-shoes in
and these other birds –
ballet dancers, musicians, architects –
die in the snow
and freeze to branches,
watch him happily flying
on the O-levels and A-levels
of the air.

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