8
watching the shorebirds that winter here
... the limits and the lack
Set in their fi nished features.
-- w.h. auden
They are exactly
as intelligent as
they need to be, to
be what they are: having
limits, but no lack,
in their physical
perfection, each is, in
each detail, on close
inspection a wonder and
matter-of-fact. Clear-
ly clearly clearly cry
some curlews fl ying by
us assorted humans here.
back in 194647
We'd turn fi rst to those poems by him,
when the new issue came out, though knowing
they would just be studies of fl owers --
brief, accurate, vivid -- diff erent
individual fl owers, their shapes, their
positions and balancings on their stems,
small movements special to them, the varying