Task

 In Germany, the churches have opened
 but there’s to be no singing. Here, birds
 are back, nesting as they always will  
 in April. A pair of blue tits shuttle  
 past the kitchen window. They’ve no idea
 what year it is, nor what’s happening  
 in the hospitals. Their whole world’s  
 the building of one nest, smaller than my fist,
 tough enough to sustain six new beings.  
 They won’t stop feeding their young
 till they’re fledged into this fractured world
 of shining fragments, their only task to sing.
 
 
 Victoria Field