Pigeons

For a third day the pigeons wake me,
fluting at dawn from the ridgepole, scratching
at roofslates, rousing me to fly enraged to the window to terrify them away with shout, handclap, window-
bang - upon which they flurry and burst from the filthy ledges each time, I admit it, beautifully, as if a hundred silvery shards of
roof
have in an irregular wind torn loose, feathered and risen, and seem not likely to return. But frightened
to only one circuit of the neighbourhood, the flock flares back onto the plenteous center
of the yard, each time in less than a minute descends
in its immense, filthy fluttering, hooting and babbling, shitting the yard, the eaves, the fences, smothering
the few green spasms of new grass and leaves, greedy seethe of wings, derangement of green and coral iridescences, clustering the feeder on which it has never ceased to be intent.