Why Birds Sing - L. S. Mensah

I

 

The corncrake handed

Me this proverb:

       

                                          A bird

                                          Is not a pillow.

     

 

She’d married another crake

Who built her a fine nest,

Then was thrown

Out at the break up

 

                                           Crek

                                           Crek 

She croaked

In the coarse grass:

      

                                          Pluck your own feathers

                                          To make your own eider.

 

 

II

 

The grass finch whispered 

In the quiet breeze:

  

                                          No one bargains

                                          For unripe yams

   

She’d betrothed her daughter

To an elderly goldfinch, but

Was forced to unswallow

The dowry, when her young

Died young.

 

 

                                          Oh Dependable

                                          God of Finches

She dirged in

The shrapnel rain                                       

                                          Let all songbirds

                                          Know, not to tell 

                                          The root crop

                                          By its climbers.

 

III

 

Tramping the shallows

In her pylon heels

Mrs Flamingo sieved

Lobster and krill

With the aside:

 

                                          Everyday dem mek yeye

                                          Mek laughter, sey flamingo

                                          Na stupid bird,

                                          Na bird idiotic

                                          Becos im waka waka

                                          Like telegraph pole

                                          Wey breeze shake.

                                          Only flamingo sabe dis:

                                          Everyday for bird beautifuls

                                          One day for we flamingoes.
 

I thought to query 

The Mistress Flamingo,

But arrested thought

With counter-thought: 

Even flamingos need

Their soliloquies.

 

 

IV

 

The weaverbird intoned,

When he broke a beak,

Cracking the coconut's

Décolletage:

 

                                          It is the bird

                                          Of the savannah,

                                          Not the forest,

                                          Who knows millet

                                          Is edible.

 

V 

 

The falcon buttoned

His middle talon

Into the heron’s neck

Hurtled down the sky's

Spine like tracer

Lightning, and murmured: 

                                          

                                          A confounding shame

                                          When no one notices

                                          The colour of shadows.

 

He would not elucidate

I did not expostulate.