A Catalog Of Irish Birds

 –– for Tomas Transtomer

Your poem Autumn in the Skerries reminds me 
I have never seen in Ireland an eagle or buzzard.

The former must be long gone like the corncrake,
but where is the latter in a place where death is so present?

Do I watch the sky only at night to check my compass with 
The Plough, image that brings me right back to earth?

The view that absorbs me is across the ground: the bog 
cotton swaying, predicting rain from the southwest, 

the rocky incline I must walk up to the ring of stones, 
picking my way through punishing spiky furze.    

So often here in the West what gets one’s attention 
is what’s on earth, what’s buried beneath it: the past.

Not so important the sky, empty of birds except 
the planes heading into Shannon: the future.

The Irish poet calls the magpie half 
a white crow, I see them often. 

I can’t ignore the rook or the crows 
crowding every sycamore

but choose instead the diminutives:
the robin, the pied wagtail.

Like the corncrake I suppose 
I will soon be gone from here, from Ireland.

The legendary wild swans common
place to me, suit literature better, 
than floating on the estuaries of Galway Bay.

The China pheasant everywhere immigrant.
I imagine them mythical, penciled teardrop 
eyes for the Book of Kells’ decorated initials.

But the coo-coo’s ostinato worries me, 
dire keeper of the count of waning days

I’d choose not to look for, to listen to. . .
but listen, Tom, any day now she’ll be heading your way 

leaving us one big egg, a ticking bomb, a bullying chick 
to take over the nest before flying out 

to North Africa. Will she return across the Irish Sea,
the Atlantic in May?  Will we?