If what you hear is like a field
and the height of a lark above it
then the field has dwindled and the wind
bells on the razor wire around
the verge beyond which nothing
but the pointless din of outer space
gets through to you. Acoustic junk.
The earth itself begins to hum
with the infinitesimal tunnelling
of umpteen holts and vaults and brood halls
and the sky each dawn is lower than
the day before as through wound down
like a press-head on a worm-screw
where once you woke and heard the threads
of birdsong trailed from hedge to hedge
as clear and intricately round
as a palm-bark epic in Telugu.
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