No.20

Edith Piaf, Roger McGough, Bette Midler, Jacques Brel, Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Robert Burns, Spike Middleton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Shel Silverstein, Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon, etc.

The Song of the Battery Hen

Edwin Brock 1927-97

We can't grumble about accommodation:

we have a new concrete floor that's

always dry, four walls that are

painted white, and a sheet-iron roof

the rain drums on. A fan blows warm air

beneath our feet to disperse the smell

of chicken shit and, on dull days

fluorescent lightening sees us.

You can tell me: if you come by

the north door, I am in the twelfth pen

on the left hand side of the third row

from the floor; and in that pen

I am usually the middle one of three.

But even without directions, you'd 

discover me. I have the same orange-red

comb, yellow beak and auburn

feathers, but as the door opens and you

hear above the electric fan a kind of

one word wail, I am the one 

who sounds loudest in my head.

Listen. Outside this house there's an

orchard with small moss-green apple

trees; beyond that, two fields of

cabbages; then on the far side of

the road, a broiler house. Listen:

one cockerel grows out of there, as 

tall and proud as the first of the hour of the sun.

Sometimes I stop cackling with the others

to listen, and wonder if he hears me.

The next time you come here, look for me.

Notice the way I sound inside my head.

God made us all differently,

And blessed us with this expensive home.

-o0o-