Those birds outside your window at dawn <br />singing all at once fit to bust – <br /> <br />did you know they migrate from Islam <br />in the fighting season? <br /> <br />They’re all Sufis: they sleep all night <br />with the Beloved; and in the morning <br /> <br />they exchange the jokes they heard, <br />the pillow talk from the night before sleep; <br /> <br />then the blackbird and the thrush <br />weave these into stories which they sing <br /> <br />all day; then at night the nightingale <br />makes them all into one beautiful poem <br /> <br />about being intoxicated into song <br />by the wine of Shiraz; the rose-water wafers; <br /> <br />and how those who say <br />that one cannot be intoxicated <br /> <br />by the longing for the One <br />have proved themselves wrong <br /> <br />and proved the nightingale right <br />as you can know in yourself <br /> <br />when the nightingale sings of this <br />to the heart’s light pulsing in the stars.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/those-birds/
