AN RUD A DÚRIT ÉAN BEAG LIOM
( A Little Bird Told Me)
- for David Cooke -
"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." - Ecclesiastes 10-20
"Oh!" said the bird
" A human who..."
( and I never saw such
a surprised starling )
"...can understand
our language!"
"You can speak!" I blurted out.
"So, I see can you!" gasped the starling.
"The strange thing is...!"
I framed my words carefully
"...we can understand each other!"
the starling finished my sentence.
"But how..?"
being human I had to ask.
"Forget the hows and whys!"
friend starling replied.
"Just relish the moment
the such and suchness of it all!"
I made up my mind
to do so.
"Everything talks if
you only listen!"
the starling continued
its lesson.
"The mountains talk
to the seas continuously!"
The starling so
informed me.
"But humans never ever
(well hardly ever)listen!"
chirped the starling
playfully.
I see it had been listening
to Gilbert and Sullivan.
"And..." the starling went on
it was us birds who taught them!"
I could tell it was proud of
the whole nation of birds.
"Well, I'ill be...!" I sad.
"Yes..." said the starling "...a poet!"
"Poets know the language
of everything"
The starling stated
as if it were a law.
"What the reed in the rushes
told the lake..."
"Or how the sky sees
and says it all..."
Then its feathers trembled
with the change in the air.
"Well, I must fly!"
chuckled the starling.
"Well, well..." boomed the sky
in perfect Blueness.
"Was that a human
I saw you talking to..."
thundered it vastness
dark clouds looming on its horizon.
"Noooo - not me!"
lied the starling
for whatever
reason.
"Hmmm..!" hmmmmthe sky suspiciously
"He looked a bit Irish to me!"
"Níl Gaeilge ar bith agam ar chor ar bith!"
stammered the starling.
And the day continued on
talking to Time incessantly.
The éan beag that told me all this against the wishes of the sky...was the drud or druideog...the common starling or as in the W.B. Yeats' poem THE STARE'S NEST. It liked to quote the lines to me in its own charming voice.
"We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty;"
And here was my little stare friend opening my mind out and turning the key.
When caught by the sky telling tales to humans the little fella tries to get out of it by telling the sky "I don't have any Irish at all!" but in Irish. Of course the sky although knowing everything didn't however know any Irish!
I was uncertain of the lines about uncertainty in the Yeats and was trying to remember the Callimachus about people not listening...how a mountain never listens to a sea. And David Cooke when he was staying with us was delighted to find some Greek that he both loved and could indeed read and I thought I bectcha David could tell me. But of course not having a David Cooke at hand I stumbled along in these lines and offered up the poem to him.
