The Place

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by R S Thomas

Summer is here.
Once more the house has its
Spray of martins, Prousts fountain
Of small birds, whose light shadows
Come and go in the sunshine
Of the lawn as thoughts do
In the mind. Watching them fly
Is my business, not as a man vowed
To science, who counts their returns
To the rafters, or sifts their droppings
For facts, recording the wave-length
Of their screaming; my method is so
To have them about myself
Through the hours of this brief
Season and to fill with their
Movement, that it is I that they build
In and bring up their young
To return to after the bitter
Migrations, knowing the site
Inviolate through its outward changes.

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