Don’t expect anything new.

You know my kind:

          aberrant honeyeater

                    bell miner

                              berrypecker.

We are mock and echo

you say we’ve ripped your song

                                          but that’s another story.

               The isle

is full of noises. Listen.
*
They have lost nothing from this change

          do the can-can, cancan can

The main thing the ACL wanted was to take out

the mimicking parts of the acts          says Wendy Francis

          Queensland director of the Australian Christian Lobby

     wendyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy          wendywend

          wen wen wen when when when when when

a civil partnerships system mimics marriage

                    and attempts to set up a marriage-like system

when when when when can can can
*
In songbirds, the choice of song is learned

but the need to sing’s instinctive.

Maybe for humans, too.

In mountainous parts of the Canary Islands and Turkey

the hill people whistle to talk

across miles of rock and cliff.

A dialogue of trills and warbles

rings out all day, the air filled with the

uncorded, foldless language

of lip and tongue and breath.
*
(the canary is named after the Canary Islands

which are named after

dogs that might have been seals

but no one knows for sure.

Origins aren’t what they used to be)
*
Mozart bought a starling in May of 1784.

It sang back to him a scrap of his Piano Concerto No. 17

with a G natural turned sharp. Some scholars say

it wasn’t Mozart who composed it

          but the bird.
When the starling died, Mozart staged a funeral

          and wrote an elegy.

Poems about Mozart’s starling have been written by

Daneen Wardrop, Karl Kirchwey, Robert Cording, and

Ralph Burns.

          Something here about mimicry and love and awe.

Something here about creation.
*
the mimicking parts

          wendywendy can wendy can wendy can do

do the can-can

show us your galop infernal

          daneeeeeeeeen daneeeeeeeeen

                    star

-ling

          Love you Queenslaaaaaaand

               Where the Bleijie hell are you?

ralphburns ralpburns ralphburns ralphburns

drop war

                    star

-ling

drop war

star-ling

drop
*
When singing back the songs they have heard

starlings tend to sing off-key

          and to sing fragments only.
*
How do songbirds transmit vocal motifs?

Researchers report that a starling cried mizu, mizu (Japanese for ‘water’)

             after it flew to the tap for a drink.

Another screamed

defence

          defence

          defence

after listening to basketball on TV.
*
Common starlings,

we spread the bridal creeper

we probe and sally and lunge and glean

as each new man comes with nets or traps

or talk or gun or broom. 
We speak in more tongues than you can fathom.

Our variations on your song are not

variations on your song.

What came first, theme or variation?

No, think again:

What came first,

theme or variation?
*
It’s not that we want to be chickens or phones

or humans or alarms

          just starlings

                                                  just us just us

          but we like to talk

and talk back to the world

and chickens speak chicken

phones speak phone

and maybe everything seems like mimicry

if you only listen for yourself.