Songs the Jirt Sang

The chaffinch fluttering at a window
cannot comprehend the glass. It is why
birds unsettle the Jirt by resembling
distant ancestors who lacked their gift
(like a jewel within their fragile skulls)
for seeing the obvious that constrains them,
a blindness of ours that makes the Jirt
peck out their plumage in frustration.

One Jirt voice added to another swells
the chorus until it is the flock that sings;
by which music they mean sentience.
We were not to trust a single one of them,
only together was their race mindful.
They found the opposite was true of us,
a crowd of humans lacked all conscience,
and yet it was such monsters we let rule.

Faced with claims like these, relations cooled
and the hollow-boned critics of our nature
thought it best their fleet migrated onwards.
Governments, faceless corporations
and lynch mobs puzzle over stooping hawks
daubed on walls and the harsh cry of gulls
downing their words; all inconceivable
as the fate of the world beyond the glass.