Air Raids

The story of a starling haunted to death
by a paparazzi of twitchers has put me
entirely off this ornithology business.
I will use my birthday binoculars
to rifle through windows from the roof instead.
And as I watch a couple watching Friends,
I am thinking how birds defy surveillance.
For example, at Gray's Inn, the robin
in the hot-pink roses, while we benched, backs
to a ten foot, twice-yearly waxed, black golem
of Francis Bacon. He snipped the air
like secaturs snipping off thorns, flew
straight to us, then slalomed through
the tyres of a parked Landrover,
like a propellor flung from a crashing plane.
And the magpie that clenched its branch
like a riding instructress her whip,
then launched itself, landing at my knee
like a harrier jump-jet. And the pigeon
whose neck you said was like oil,
splitting light into magentas etc,
who then marched in front of us
like he was on a catwalk.