Note to a SparrowIn childhood, chasing chidiyas round a roomwas sport. Exhausted, you would fall and flutter.I’d switch the fan off first to ward off doom;I was a wanton boy… not a nutter.We didn’t have a proper word for sparrow,You were generic birds who lived at home,Like dogs and sibs, but not as pets or kin,Free to flit past Amma’s straight-and-narrow,To feed and nest and roam,To fly, while grounded mammals mooched within.I haven’t raced you now in sixty years,My children have no memories of you,In times deranged by grand extinction fearsI wonder what the two of you will do.I see your painted head and inky bib,The twitchy way you tilt your head and cheep,I see her face, pale eyebrowed and demure,Your wife for life, this hot and flighty rib.I see you in my sleep;Awake, you are an absence I endure.An absent sparrow is an awful thing,An order of the ordinary gone,The nightingale forgetting how to singIs not the same, the world will carry on.I want you back inside my balconyAstir within your made-to-measure nest,Intent on kissing up a brood of you.I’ll find an icon of Saint AnthonyTo guard your sated rest,You’ll be a sign the world is back in true.Or not. Two fostered sparrows won’t repairA broken world or douse the hidden fireThat fogs your balcony with charry airAnd folds the earth into a poisoned gyre.And yet, to share a common wall with youTo live adjacently will be a prize,Because you’ll be this house’s soul, its numen.I see you whir and light upon my shoeLook up and meet my eyes,And clock the mad conceit of being human.