Two Pigeons
They’ve perched for hours
on that window-ledge, scarcely
moving. Beak to beak,
a matched set, they differ
almost imperceptibly—
like salt and pepper shakers.
It’s an event when they tuck
(simultaneously) their pinpoint
heads into lavender vests
of fat. But reminiscent
of clock hands blandly
turning because they must
have turned—somehow, they’ve
taken on the grave,
small-eyed aspect of monks
hooded in conferences
so intimate nothing need
be said. If some are chuckling
in the park, earning
their bread, these are content
to let the dark engulf them—
it’s all the human
imagination can fathom,
how single-mindedly
mindless two silhouettes
stand in a window thick
as milk glass. They appear
never to have fed on
anything else when they stir
all of a sudden to peck
savagely, for love
or hygiene, at the grimy
feathers of the other;
but when they resume
their places, the shift
is one only a painter
or a barber (prodding a chin
back into position)
would be likely to notice.
Copyright Credit: Mary Jo Salter, “Two Pigeons” from Henry Purcell in Japan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). Copyright © 1984 by Mary Jo Salter. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source: Henry Purcell in Japan (1984)