And The Starlings

Poemata 88

So many lessons / we must yet learn from mistakes / we did not commit.

Walking yesterday two birds I saw lain dead
On the sidewalk there, corpses laid out without care;
Knowing not what laid them out upon that bed
Food it made them not, nor was a struggle so fought;

Feathers left most neatly, resting on their sides
Fallen birds oft do, shaped such are things that once flew;
Dark and particolor, many stars abide
Plumage such as this, firstly quite easy to miss;

Touched the bodies not, despite my sympathy
Eagle's food they were, find them he would, I was sure;
Do I care that things must go so nat'rally? 
Why disdain the dead? What was the thing left unsaid?

One may guess a lesson in these fallen birds
Whose they may have been, where such had firstly been seen;
Curséd creatures brought by those entranced with words
Pestilence on wing, ruin and famine they bring;

Once a hundred such were brought to Central Park
If to do no wrong, now are five million strong;
Many pets my cousins brought to leave their mark
War will have his day, left in the sun to decay.