in the soil On a walk through town I see a pigeon dead on the kerb with no visible injury and then, between the road and the sea, a herring gull similarly dead, blood leaking out from beneath its beak presumably from the impact of its fall, the body and wings folded as if at peace. When I lived in Sicily I would see dead birds in the street all the time, the heat dropping them clean out of the sky – a swift, once, which never in its life should touch the mean earth – but heat cannot be it in this summer of ours.
18.6.24
18.6.24
18.6.24
in the soil On a walk through town I see a pigeon dead on the kerb with no visible injury and then, between the road and the sea, a herring gull similarly dead, blood leaking out from beneath its beak presumably from the impact of its fall, the body and wings folded as if at peace. When I lived in Sicily I would see dead birds in the street all the time, the heat dropping them clean out of the sky – a swift, once, which never in its life should touch the mean earth – but heat cannot be it in this summer of ours.