Out one morning for an early flight,

when the sky was lit but the sun unrisen,

in a Surrey suburb full of trees,

the air itself I breathed was trembling

with the sound of all the songbirds of the earth,

an embracing, shimmering polyphony.

I hear it still – and remember a time,

walking home before dawn fifty years ago

in a Liverpool suburb filled with trees,

this fabled sound I had never heard,

a polyphony, shimmering, embracing,

the very air trembling.