Sissinghurst

The failing summer evening sunshine
struggled across the hazel hedges
which walled the grassy alcove where
a straggled arc of listeners
focused a poet there.

The man stood to recite his verses
(published in his latest volume)
and used the cliché 'poetry sings'.
But while he sang of humankind
a thrush sang thrushy things.

Soon it was joined by blackbirds, robins
shouting their manhood to the heavens.
Sound without sense to human ears
but clear and fresh and ringing true
as daylight disappears.

Boldly the thrush confronts the audience
flaunting rhetorical repetition.
Although it can't make its poetry scan,
unfazed by the human competition
the bird outsings the man.

But as the stain of night's black pigment
spreads through the sky, the thrush must finish.
Without humanity's spoken word
it cannot think beyond its kind.
The man outlasts the bird.