By Mukul Dahal
Early one morning sparrows hop in the yard
as if they’ve just alighted from the moon.
Their twitters come in fragments,
making a random song.
Their beaks pretty as their legs.
Body, neck and tail gracefully tiny.
They would not whisper or
burst into a loud laughter.
They perch on the window ledge,
like a leaf from a branch.
They chew seeds with their nimble jaws,
and twitter… twitter….twitter,
not about the sky that is growing ghostly
with dark clouds.
When their legs are still merry,
their faces are darkened by the soot in the air.
When the cover on their body still soft,
their eyes transfixed and mute
by the sight of a snake
crawling into the nest,
where their chicks huddle together.
[Born and brought up in Nepal, Mukul Dahal has had a collection of his poems, Beyond the Last Frontier (Seemaater Seemanta), published in Nepali. He edits PEN HIMALAYA, a quarterly e-zine of poetry, book reviews and interviews. Having completed an MA in Creative Writing at Swansea University, he currently lives in Aberdeen. He has been published both at home and abroad.]