The Ostrich and Penguin watching enviously at the Aviators.

Det har varit lite si och så med uppdateringar av bloggen. En anledning är sommarlovets kvalitetstid med barnen. Det andra skälet får ni se mer av senare idag när jag startar mitt stora Poetry Slam Project.

Framöver kommer fredagarna att innehålla fågeldikter. Men eftersom flygplatsen var stängd i fredags så får ni "en spann vingar" (hoppas ni uppskattar och förstår ordvitsen) i dag i stället.

Först ut en "strutsdikt".

*

The Ostrich, by Ed Shacklee

A feather duster up on stilts
Who favors neither pants nor kilts,
He thinks his native state is splendid
And gads about as God intended.

Content with just a hint of wings,
He doesn’t honk or point at things.
His mark is light upon the land.
Whose head is buried in the sand?

***

Medan vi väntar på take off så låter jag en annan flygoduglig fågel vandra in i bloggen, pingvinen. I den här dikten jämförs fågelns utsatthet med ett litet barns.

To (vers 1-2), by Franz Wright, f. 1953
(From Poetry Magazine, December 2009.)

Before you were I loved you
and when you were born
and when you took your first step
Although I did not know
good luck I want to say

lone penguin keep sturdily waddling
in the direction of those frozen mountains sister
of desolate sanctity
I want to scream
Although I did not know you

***

Okej då kommer den, fågeldikten framför många andra, Drifting Off, av nobelpristagaren Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). Ni kan roa er med att räkna ut hur många fågelarter som förekommer i dikten. Jag har tagit med den främst för att fågeln med den stora vingbredden, albatrossen, finns med i den.

Drifting off, by Seamus Heaney
(From Opened Ground : Selected Poems, 1966-1996. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.)

The guttersnipe and the albatross
gliding for days without a single wingbeat
were equally beyond me.

I yearned for the gannet’s strike,
the unbegrudging concentration
of the heron.

In the camaraderie of rookeries,
in the spiteful vigilance of colonies
I was at home.

I learned to distrust
the allure of the cuckoo
and the gossip of starlings,

kept faith with doughty bullfinches,
leveled my wit too often
to the small-minded wren

and too often caved in
to the pathos of waterhens
and panicky corncrakes.

I gave much credence to stragglers,
overrated the composure of blackbirds
and the folklore of magpies.

But when goldfinch or kingfisher rent
the veil of the usual,
pinions whispered and braced

as I stooped, unwieldy
and brimming,
my spurs at the ready.