Lyrebirds

Over the west side of the mountain, that’s lyrebird country.

I could go down there, they say, in the early morning, and I’d see them,

I’d hear them.

Ten years, and I have never gone.

I’ll never go.

I’ll never see the lyrebirds - the few, the shy, the fabulous, the dying poets.

I should see them, if I lay there in the dew: first a single movement like a waterdrop falling, then stillness, then a brown head, brown eyes, a splendid bird, bearing like a crest the symbol of his art, the high symmetrical shape of the perfect lyre.

I should hear that master practising his art.

No,

I have never gone.

Some things ought to be left secret, alone; some things – birds like walking fables – ought to inhabit nowhere but the reverence of the heart.