"You! Magpies! Bugger off!" I shout
in my best Billy-Goats'-Gruff dialect,
and two do - quit the topknots
of the tallest trees they'd settled on,
my garden back, long tails streaming out,
off to some few doors down, the venue, now -
but what a monstrous fuss still emanates
from somewhere behind me, on John's roof.
As foul small troop of ruffians as ever sent
to residence of, one, Macduff.
Aye, but I
am not in absentia, eating Sunday dinner
leavings, reheated and dashed with Tabasco,
in the wet garden, raincoat on chair, aware.
That's better! Blackbird aria, pigeon sermon,
sparrow nag, robin glitz & glitter.
Yet still
I hear machine-gun rattle of the magpies
claiming the ground of their killing fields
not so many doors away to be ignored.
Wonder what brutality's being done
for troop to feast on - their easy-meat.
