He appeared
Suddenly,
Out of the blue,
Landing lightly at the
Open window-sill,
Crossing the huge grill,
Then,
Perching on the tracks
Of the sliding glass,
Looked inside the vacant hall,
By tiilting his tiny head
In the right side,
Eyes bright,
Sat he for a second,
Undecided still,
When,
Startled by the arrival of the
Human figure,
The shy little bird,
A house sparrow,
Flew out of the same
Sun-lit passage into
A beckoning sky—
A very rare urban sight,
Hardly registered by anybody,
In the busy household.
And a city culture where
Birds, flowers and trees
Are liked
Only in picture-books.
Proust’s madelaine confection is here substituted by the sparrow.A poetic homage to a Remembrance of things past?Or as Douglas Adams put it,this contains life,the universe and everything.
Thanks a lot, Louis.
Yes, indeed the number of sparrows are sharply dwindling. I read in an article the other day that these creatures are quite sensitive to the high-frequency signals emitted by the
cell-phone towers ! If this were to be true, then this poem definitely sends out a signal that is not at all shy, but pretty loud and clear !
Thanks Lokesh.