Making love in a summer oak Poem by Mustafa Stitou

Making love in a summer oak,
a couple of times a couple of seconds,
flurrying off while she shakes herself,
arranges her feathers.

Walking on trunks, going up,
going down, hanging off twigs
upside-down,
pecking buds,

hopping along branches. Scratching
around treetops, under bushes,
in a muddy puddle.
Is my darling nesting?

I bring her dark earth.
Is she brooding? I feed her
caterpillars picked out
from between the leaves. Oh,

never falling prey to aporias,
phobias, crippling fantasies of
omnipotence and impotence, intoxicating
suffocating addictive

solitude, the susceptibility
that eats away at my jaw,
escapism. But battling blackbirds!
Cursing a sparrow!

Drinking rain, singing
with a beak full of ants,
a beak full of ants. Oh,
no darker or less

illuminating than yours,
hole-nester, is the spring
that gave rise to me!
What is that heart-rending

quiet hubbub? In the nesting box
my young are learning to fly.
Oh, some six weeks of family life
and then hup

banish those kids.
(And display some strange behaviour sometimes,
suddenly smearing my droppings out
over a dead branch.)

Translation: David Colmer