Lars Gustafsson's 'small wingèd singers'

Spring’s joyous choir of birds

Dedicated to Staffan Söderblom

Ah those joyous voices of birds in spring!

How well I too remember the choir

of those small wingèd singers

They were borne in on a special tray

by schoolmaster Gustav Edin,

extremely dusty, increasingly pale in colour

and – it might possibly seem –

somewhat overambitiously

stuffed:

sparrow and nightingale, hawk and pied fly-catcher,

meadow pipit and dipper –

And from a gramophone record

from Radio Sweden, much over-used,

all their joyous voices were played

I never learnt

to distinguish one chirp from the other

And now in October the dull voice

of the curlew is all that is left

I did however

finally learn that one