los hombres aún estarán tibios. Los viejos abrigos se desechan.
El viejo hielo se afloja.
Las viejas semillas despiertan.
Aléjate de la oscuridad, ya es hora.
Trad. Mónica Mansour
THE STARLINGS IN GEORGE SQUARE
I
Sundown on the high stonefields!
The darkening roofscape stirs –
thick – alive with starlings
gathered singing in the square –
like a shower of arrows they cross
the flash of a western window,
they bead the wires with jet,
they nestle preening by the lamps
and shine, sidling by the lamps
and sing, shining, they stir
the homeward hurrying crowds.
A man looks up and points
smiling to his son beside him
wide-eyed at the clamour on those cliffs –
it sinks, shrills out in waves,
levels to a happy murmur,
scatters in swooping arcs,
a stab of confused sweetness
that pierces the boy like a story,
a story more than a song.
He will never forget that evening,
the silhouette of the roofs,
the starlings by the lamps.
II
The City Chambers are hopping mad.
Councillors with rubber plugs in their ears!
Secretaries closing windows!
Window-cleaners want protection and danger money.
The Lord Provost can’t hear herself think, man.
What’s that?
Lord Provost, can’t hear herself think.
At the General Post Office
the clerks write Three Pounds Starling in the saving-books.
Each telephone-booth is like an aviary.
I tried to send a parcel to County Kerry but –
The cables to Cairo got fankled, sir.
What’s that?
I said the cables to Cairo got fankled.
And as for the City Information Bureau –
I’m sorry I can’t quite chirrup did you twit –
No I wanted to twee but perhaps you can’t cheep –
Would you try once again, that’s better, I – sweet –
When’s the last boat to Milngavie? Tweet?
What’s that?
I said when’s the last boat to Milngavie?
III
There is nothing for it now but scaffolding:
clamp it together, send for the bird-men,
Scarecrow Strip for the window-ledge landings,
Cameron’s Repellent on the overhead wires.
Armour our pediments against eavesdroppers.
This is a human oupost. Save our statues.
Send back the jungle. And think of the joke:
as it says in the papers, It is very comical
to watch them alight on the plastic rollers
and take a tumble. So it doesn’t kill them?
All right, so who’s complaining? This isn’t Peking
where they shoot the sparrows for hygiene and cash.
So we’re all humanitarians, locked in our cliff-dwellings
encased in our repellent, guano-free and guilt-free.
The Lord Provost sings in her marble hacienda.
The Postmaster-General licks an audible stamp.
Sir Walter is vexed that his column’s deserted.
I wonder if we really deserve starlings?
There is something to be said for these joyous messengers
that we repel in our indignant orderliness.
They lift up the eyes, they lighten the heart,
and some day we’ll decipher that sweet frenzied whistling
as they wheel and settle along our hard roofs
and take those grey buttresses for home.
One thing we know they say, after their fashion.
They like the warm cliffs of man.
LOS ESTORNINOS EN GEORGE SQUARE
I
¡El anochecer en los altos pedregales!
El oscuro paisaje de techos se agita,
tupido, viviente reunión
de estorninos cantando en la plaza;
como lluvia de flechas atraviesan
el destello de una ventana al poniente,
son cuentas de azabache en los cables,
anidan acicalándose junto a los faroles
y relucen, deslizándose junto a los faroles
y cantan, reluciendo, agitan
a la muchedumbre presurosa que va a casa.
Un hombre mira hacia arriba y los señala
sonriendo
