From our April/May 2019 issue, which you can buy here.
Raymond Antrobus
With Birds You’re Never Lonely
I can’t hear the barista
over the coffee machine.
Spoons slam, steam rises.
I catch the eye of a man
sitting in the corner
of the cafe reading alone
about trees which is, incidentally,
all I can think about
since returning.
Last week I sat alone
on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest
with sun-syrupped Kauri trees
and brazen Tui birds with white tufts
and yellow and black beaks.
They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly
I had to turn off my hearing aids.
When all sound disappeared, I was tuned
into a silence that was not an absence.
As I switched sound on again,
silence collapsed.
The forest spat all the birds back,
and I was jealous—
the earthy Kauri trees, their endless
brown and green trunks of sturdiness.
I wondered what the trees would say about us?
What books would they write if they had to cut us down?
Later, stumbling from the forest I listened
to a young Maori woman.
She could tell which bird chirped,
a skill she learned from her grandfather
who said with birds you’re never lonely.
In that moment I felt sorry
for any grey tree in London,
for the family they don’t have,
the Gods they can’t hold.
For Rashan Charles
And after the black boy is
strangled by police, after
the protests where the man,
his Rottweiler on an iron leash yells,
let’s go mash up dis city
and another crowd bulks,
the parents of the murdered
beg us not to become
the monsters some think
we already are—even when
the barista shakes her head
at the banners, says actually,
police be killing whites too.
Look how scary it is
to be here and know
if we die someone
will make a sound
like her before earth
is tipped over us.
Who hasn’t had enough?
Enough burning
bins, pushing
shopping trolleys
into static and sirens?
Who isn’t chanting
enough, enough,
enough, throwing spells,
the rebellious
holding what they can
in front of a supermarket
or police stations
or voting booths—I am
kind to the man
sitting next to me
in C.L.R James Library, even if
his breathing disturbs me.
Can we disagree graciously
I am tired of people
not knowing the volume
of their power. Who doesn’t
deserve
some silence at night?
In 2019 Raymond Antrobus won the Ted Hughes Award for his collection The Perseverance.
For more information, visit http://www.raymondantrobus.com/.
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