Poem
Karen McCarthy Woolf
AN AVIARY OF SMALL BIRDS
AN AVIARY OF SMALL BIRDS
AN AVIARY OF SMALL BIRDS
My love is an aviaryof small birds
and I must learn
to leave the door ajar . . .
Are you the sparrow
who landed when I sat
at a slate table
sewing lettuces?
Webbs Wonder, Lollo
Rosso, English Cos . . .
Swift and deft
you flit and peck peck
quick as the light that
constitutes your spirit.
Yes, you were briefer
than Neruda’s octobrine.
So much rain that night.
Our room is an ocean
where swallows dive.
The bubble bursts
too soon, too late, too long:
all sorts of microscopia
swim upstream, float in
on summer’s storm.
The tenor of your heart
is true as a tuning fork struck
– and high! My love
is the bird who flies free.
© 2013, Karen McCarthy Woolf
From: originally part of the Rain of Poems Project 2012
From: originally part of the Rain of Poems Project 2012
Karen McCarthy Woolf
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, )
The title poem of Karen McCarthy Woolf’s pamphlet – a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and New Statesman Book of the Year in 2006 – came about as a piece of serendipity: “I was sitting at my desk wondering what to write,” says the poet, “so I cut a Sharon fruit in half. The result was The Worshipful Company of Pomegranate Slicers.”
This attention and receptivity to the world around her – its...
This attention and receptivity to the world around her – its...
Poems
Poems of Karen McCarthy Woolf
Close
AN AVIARY OF SMALL BIRDS
My love is an aviaryof small birds
and I must learn
to leave the door ajar . . .
Are you the sparrow
who landed when I sat
at a slate table
sewing lettuces?
Webbs Wonder, Lollo
Rosso, English Cos . . .
Swift and deft
you flit and peck peck
quick as the light that
constitutes your spirit.
Yes, you were briefer
than Neruda’s octobrine.
So much rain that night.
Our room is an ocean
where swallows dive.
The bubble bursts
too soon, too late, too long:
all sorts of microscopia
swim upstream, float in
on summer’s storm.
The tenor of your heart
is true as a tuning fork struck
– and high! My love
is the bird who flies free.
From: originally part of the Rain of Poems Project 2012
AN AVIARY OF SMALL BIRDS
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère