Death of a Bird by A D Hope

I just had another read of Hay Fever, I love how it deals with such a grim topic as death and time in such a seemingly distant and contemplative way. I suppose I should say another thing about A D Hope, he's very good at creating images and motifs that run through his poems, like the scythe in Hay Fever. I really fluked upon him going through an anthology of Australian poems, but while I glossed over most poems something hit me about A D Hope and I think after reading Hay Fever again it's more than an intellectual appreciation. As I said poetry for me has to deal with something human and if you'll read Hay Fever closely you'll aslo notice the way A D Hope plays with what the scythe means in his poem and he also does some interesting things with the sounds of words and some nice enjambment on lines that run on to the next (ah, I think secretly that's my favourite form of play, someone who likes to be naughty with their words...give me a break people I'm a poet and this is what we get excited or dare I say Itchy about).

Death of a Bird is a very different poem to Hay Fever, it has none of the levity of Hay Fever, but the same darkness. It is again a poem very much about death, but it feels less personal. It isn't so much about A D Hope's personal secrets, but something he's witnessed and feels strongly about. Death of a Bird, is exactly what it sounds like, but it's also a fascinating journey poem as well.

Also check out this very informative blog. If you want to understand the actual influences and hear about an actual conversation with hope go to this website, it's also where I found the text for this poem.

Death of a 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 scraps 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,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design. 

And 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.