St Bartholomew’s birds

A congregation of cacophonous starlings
chatters vivaciously in the tops
of two trees only
and because of the birds’ blackness
against an indigo sky
and because they have chosen
for conversation a graveyard
by an ancient priory church
alongside its sister hospital
their chattering seems ominous,
filled with dark knowledge.

Birds whose ancestors witnessed the writhings
of martyrs burning in Smithfield,
now your excitable chorusing
arouses patients in the neighbouring wards
who stare into the night
from deep illuminated sockets:
are you celebrating the survival
of your kind and of your city,
recounting stories of the blitz?
or is your raucous cackle
of untold tribulation still to come?

©Virginia Rounding, 1991

[First published in Agenda, March 1992]