All night the birds traveled from the coasthere is
spring migration:
the tribes and their combat cars on the lawn, the temples
and car roofs.
Nobody saw them reach the walls, nobody at the doors
citizens more deeply asleep than young married couples
no one stuck a head out a window and those that did
only saw a sea-blue sky without a crack or fissure in its back
except the milkman or the last drunkand nevertheless
the air was a tower of beaks and tangled hides
as when I slept near the sea during Holy Week
and the air between my bed and those waters was an old buzzard
from the rocks enjoying himself with a dead skimmer
and the female gulls snapping at the male gulls and a shaggy
comoran pounding itself against the walls of the house.
All night they traveled from the south.
I can see my wife with her very clean, neat face while she dreams
of herds of walruses, their flanks pecked and opened by the birds.