Why Don’t Bells Scare Birds? Poem by Grahame Lockey

The heat is stroking indolence like a hand
a sprawled and panting dog. The hazy sky
is lined with cables; trams rattle past, their
populous glass reflecting steep arcades,
shutter widths of windows, the sweepers
doing one side of each street, jacket arms
hanging on like tacklers. The square is jammed
by the crowd-eschewing crowd: brought
out by what they're thirsty in to loll amid a
heaving acreage of cafe tabes. The Aare
in its lazy loop around this languid city
looks blue enough to sip from - then

two, now three gunshots go off nearby -
imaginations running about like children
somewhere new. Only as the precarious
Minster's bells sound out their merging
hum of clangs, do the birds come back.



Bern 1989