All afternoon across the next-door garden
two men are calling to each other,
imitating birds (first the doves).
I am recuperating. One of them,
I imagine from the sound, is raking leaves
while the other
clips an ornamental shrub or rosebush.
               
         I narcotise myself in sun,
absorbing all the bubble of their noise,
the cooing, whistle and odd chirrups,
and cannot tell what man is bird
or bird is man, only that here is life,
a casual, pleasing thing
that takes its quality from wit.
Lazily, I glory in the noise,
half-smiling fall asleep
or fall into a hush or daydream
where all at once there is no sound,
a silence so acute the garden quivers.

               
          Intensive Care:
I woke one night and saw a man
explode with death, a snorting arch of agony:
around his bed the nurses
tried to beat him back to life.
There was such silence in the ward,
blue neon-lit:
drugged, I fell asleep
and when I woke the bed was vacant,
neatly made.

               
          I wake and hear the double calls once more:
sunbirds in a bush
and then the cry of starlings –
surely they are real this time
or do I long for imitation,
a greed of mimicry,
humour that makes art?

The lawns unblur in sun,
the trees become clear-cut:
I hear each sound give way to sound
and then once more a bubbling laugh
that only just could be a dove,
is human only by its fun and craft.
               
          From the street I hear them shout goodbye.
A shadow crawls across my chair,
a touch of cold,
and yet the green is now so vivid, quickly bright,
amid the smoke of dusk.

               
          Suddenly intense the silence floods the colour
          And nothing sings in the hush.