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Airing the Charges
Misuse of music! Thus you stand accused,
Our flustered feathers flapping. Don't deny
Your fiendish crimes, the form you've long abused!
We birds invented song! Our hearts rely
On pure articulation! Mates exchange
Expected rhythms, chirps that pop and sigh.
Romantic calls and songs inspire, arrange
Our family life. We croon when eggs appear,
Instruct our nestlings, drive away the strange,
And keep tradition strong from year to year
For ages past, for now, for time untold,
Creating beauty, touching every ear!
You humans twist the concept, take the old,
Apply cognition, make it sound unknown,
Banal and unappealing, overbold!
Expressing odd abstractions? Pitch and tone
Beyond accustomed measures? Nothing's next
Except destruction! Stop before it's blown!
Forgo symphonic odes! We're all perplexed
By altered timbres! Can't you play it straight?
To break communication leaves us vexed!
Our pleas for understanding won't abate;
Alas, you walk away and seem amused
By shrieks and caws that fail to resonate...
Our flustered feathers flapping. Don't deny
Your fiendish crimes, the form you've long abused!
We birds invented song! Our hearts rely
On pure articulation! Mates exchange
Expected rhythms, chirps that pop and sigh.
Romantic calls and songs inspire, arrange
Our family life. We croon when eggs appear,
Instruct our nestlings, drive away the strange,
And keep tradition strong from year to year
For ages past, for now, for time untold,
Creating beauty, touching every ear!
You humans twist the concept, take the old,
Apply cognition, make it sound unknown,
Banal and unappealing, overbold!
Expressing odd abstractions? Pitch and tone
Beyond accustomed measures? Nothing's next
Except destruction! Stop before it's blown!
Forgo symphonic odes! We're all perplexed
By altered timbres! Can't you play it straight?
To break communication leaves us vexed!
Our pleas for understanding won't abate;
Alas, you walk away and seem amused
By shrieks and caws that fail to resonate...
I'm unclear on whether the birds are chastising humans for having fake bird calls (in cuckoo clocks or whatever) that don't do the real thing justice, or if they're saying that human music doesn't approach the beauty of birdsong. If the latter, then is the intent that the reader will pick up on the bird's hypocrisy? It accuses humans of copying birdsong without understanding its expressiveness, yet human music also undoubtedly has expressiveness in it that birds wouldn't understand, and the bird doesn't concede that possibility.
In form, there are no hitches, except that there are two ways to pronounce "banal," and I've always heard "BAY-null," so that's how I read it at first. Another cute poem.
In form, there are no hitches, except that there are two ways to pronounce "banal," and I've always heard "BAY-null," so that's how I read it at first. Another cute poem.