Natural History

There was also an Andean condor with a leathery head
and a neck stiff and red as a penis, a peacock
trailing bracken and butterflies, a pebbled guinea-fowl,
a snazzy lorikeet and the long, yellow claws of a falcon
sweetly curled round a bar while, outside, hundreds
of people were walking from one place to another

but I cannot stop thinking
of a lead coffin
the size of a jewel box
found under the floorboards
of a house in Minster Street
containing ‘T. Challis’s bird.
Died December 27 1796’

and of how T. Challis wiggled his toes at dawn,
quarrelled, smelt the brewery on the wind,
of how a finch flared its yellow-black wings.

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