Lars Gustafsson: 'Vårens glada fågelkör'

 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