Hirundines

Wall painting in the chancel of Compton Beauchamp church.

 

HIRUNDINES

A poem dedicated to the

memory of Gilbert White

 

Giles Watson

2004

 

Author’s Note:

 

I am indebted not only to Gilbert White for his Natural History of Selborne (1788), but also to Richard Mabey for his article on White and the hirundines in B.B.C. Wildlife, Volume 21, Number 6, June 2003, p. 17, which first alerted me to the allegorical nature of the eighteenth century clergyman’s writings on these birds. Mabey points out that whilst White’s letters were read as scientific papers before the Royal Society, their subtext is concerned with “some of the great themes of life”, especially the life of a middle-aged bachelor”. This poem depends to a great degree on Mabey’s interpretation of the allegorical meaning of White’s hirundines: “The house martin is a story of livelihood, of a proper balance between work and play… The swallow’s tale is of family life, the thing White never had… The sand martin… hints at the otherness and mystery of nature… [and the Swift is an allegory of] the wildness of nature, and the freedom White missed at Selborne, lacking like-minded neighbours and cursed by coachsickness.”

 

For the purposes of this poem, as for White, the hirundines (or hirondelles, as Mabey calls them) are a disparate family of birds united by similar characteristics, and once thought to be related. Amongst them, the swift is now regarded as belonging to quite another category. Taxonomic purists are therefore asked to suspend their incredulity for Gilbert White’s sake. Likewise, Gilbert White’s belief that hirundines must hibernate during the winter months, which has been long disproved, has been accepted here because of its historical—as opposed to scientific—accuracy.

 

Section 2 of this poem was written in the field, using a notebook much as an artist uses a sketchbook, in the course of a blissful day-trip to Selborne with my partner Jeannie. The later sections of the poem deal with the hirundines in turn. In keeping with the spirit of the parson-naturalist, for whom priesthood must primarily have represented an opportunity for indulgence in natural history, and for whom the doctrines (and perhaps, in White’s case, the morals as well) of Christianity so often assumed secondary importance, but whose lives were necessarily punctuated by the daily offices and the communion service, I have felt free to take certain liberties with texts from the Book of Common Prayer.

 

 

G. Watson, Isles of Scilly, 26th June 2004.

 

 

 

 

1

 

Shall we take the old road,

where the green helleborine

nestles among ferns, where

ladies fear to go, for fear

of ghosts, and gentry shall not go

in snow? Shall we weave

through lime-slab gripping

roots of weathered oaks,

and beeches holding flints

within their grips? Where

dew drips three hours after dawn,

and snakes go not, for fear

of torpor? Shall we go,

bypass the house, and the museums,

and come, at last,

to the Long Lythe, where

the ground dips to the stream

from Gilbert’s grave?

 

Sit here, and watch

his hirundines wheel

where human dreams

have failed.

 

2

 

Beech woods fringed

with milk-spilt elder;

jackdaws chack and clatter,

rooks utter blackness,

eggshells spill from nests,

cracked and bloodied,

the life writhed from them.

 

The world widens, from

the twice-five petalled campion,

the sulphured ranunculus,

the spiked sedge, over

Oakhanger Stream, by way

of ash and birch, through

flags in forests of spiked green,

half encased in folding sepals.

 

Fringed by ragged robins

spanned by spiders’ webs,

and primeval equisetum,

sun-bleached lady’s smocks -

measured infinitessimally

by spindled skaters, tadpoles

and toadlets, writhing in clumps,

bug-eyed waterboatmen,

waterspiders with silvered bellies -

ponds mirror open sky,

where hirundines wheel,

and seem to swim, inverted,

under water.

 

But the hirundines

are not as they would have been:

devil’s birds, bills clapping

on swarms of insects undescribed,

gulping uncatalogued midges

like whales sifting krill. Let us

recreate them, while we can:

 

3

 

Whether it be, he wrote, as sport,

A treat to take away the toil

Of long migration, (or, and well

May a man, middle aged

And grown rheumatic, favour this:

To warm the blood, grown cold

From long benumbing),

House martins like to play

Before they turn to mansion building.

 

“Aerobatics before architecture,”

Their twitter seems to say,

Like grasshoppers chiding ants

For toiling all the day.

 

But then they set to mud daubing,

Their bills turned spatulas,

Deft and minute, testing consistency,

Flitting untwittering to the eaves

Each with a bib of gathered mud

Primed for plastering. Then clinging

With legs feathered to the toes,

Begin the building, layer on layer,

Lump on lump - but not for too long,

For houses built in haste

Must fall, when they are made

From clay. Paste a little, let it

Harden every day. Keep the rest

To seek the sun, and play.

 

Twelve days to construct a hemisphere:

Rustic work, no finished stucco here,

But inside, rendered soft and warm

By straw and moultings, moss

And interwoven wool, the mansion

Is made; the mother hides inside.

 

The nestlings strain, with naked

Old men’s necks, gaping

With insatiable gobs and gullets,

Their caustic excrement encased

In film unpierced by mother’s bill,

Until they learn, as babies

Learn the potty, to void it

Out the nest’s own puckered

Orifice, flagging their presence

With lime all down the wall.

 

Three weeks’ spasm of toil,

And they gaze, wide-mouthed,

Wide-eyed, from the gape,

Waiting to fly, yearning to play,

Exchanging insects in mid air;

Their mother lays again,

And raises again, ‘til time

Runs out for laying. The south,

Or sleeping, summons,

The last brood starve unfledged,

Flailing in their dark tomb,

Juices seeping through

The straw and soil.

 

The first lesson ended:

Birds and men must play

Before they toil.

 

4

 

The snap of a watch case

Is an insect taken, above

An unmown meadow, where

Soldier beetles mate on stems,

Spiders trundle white globes

And leaf hoppers aspire

To sky.

 

Her scissortailed flight

Moulds to the contour

Of chalk hills, dipping through

The vale to the village, where

Her wings make little thunder

Echoing down the chimney;

Her babies beckon in the dark,

Muting over the edge

Of their mud-moulded dish

White lime to blind Tobit

Down below. They are deep

In the chimney, where hobbies

Cannot catch them, and jackdaws

Do not grab them, emerging,

Above or below, mysteriously

Unsooted. Perched in a circle

Around the chimney pot,

Then, in an expectant line

Along a dead branch, testing

Flight like first time swimmers

Afraid of cold water.

 

She sings

Her signal. Dam and fledgeling

Ascend, to meet in mid-air

The insect exchanged,

The watch case closed.

 

The lesson ends: for sleep or flight

Her children form expectant rows.

 

 

5

 

Delighting not in cottages or towns,

Spurning even barns half tumbled-down,

She is fera natura, disclaiming domestic attachments,

Delighting in wide waters and sandy banks,

Nidificating underground.

 

Mouse-coloured and diffident,

Vacillating in flight like a butterfly

Bewildered by too many flowers -

Perhaps she means thereby

To catch one, by this imitation -

She flits above lakes, or lonely oxbows

In slow-flowing streams, or hides her brood

Where downland churchyards crumble

Into seas, and tidewashed fingerbones

Blanch on unwalked strands.

 

She is the cryptogame, the Mystery,

Who sleeps where no man knows.

 

 

6

 

But this wheeling squeal is freedom’s song:

 

Life lived on wings that never grow tired,

Spiring into space for the sheer height

And light of it. Never alighting, not on stone

Or branch, or byre, never carrying twigs

Or quills, but mating in the air, plunging

Whole fathoms in the heat of it. The shriek

Of love is piercing from the height of it.

 

Fly in splendour. Go in peace,

To love; and serve no more.

 

 

Done