I saw from my window high in Tokyo,
where fourteen million humans grow
in white canyons that echo, row upon row,
the arc of one black, swooping crow.
 
Like seen through a fisheye, still further below,
a tiny blue square held a tiny sideshow
of dolphins, caught in a circling flow,
far from the sea and far from hope.
 
And out across the wide plateau,
the urban archipelago
ebbed with a concrete undertow
and encroached on the godhead – Fuji in snow.
 
Then I knew, watching that lone black crow,
with her eye so bright and flight so low,
beak so heavy and moan so slow,
why crows might figure in tales of woe.
 
It’s not just the black of their shining cloaks,
their fondness for eyeballs and other birds’ yolks,
not only the sound of their harrowing croak
(which makes us ask, “what voice just spoke?”).
 
Why the crow is the bird that persists as our shadow,
is not just because she would sup on our marrow,
its sadder than murder and simpler than sorrow,
cold as a night with no tomorrow.
 
It's because, as we slowly eat up every meadow,
fell every tree, fill every hollow,
as car engines drown the sound of the cello,
and science unmasks all that is hallowed,
 
Of all the birds who sang in the hedgerow,
hopped in the forest, scratched in the fallow,
of all who drank nectar and loved in the willow,
welcomed the morning and flew like an arrow,
 
Of all the birds a big city can swallow,
plump grey pigeons, little brown sparrows,
the black crow remains, playing a solo:
the lone black crow is the last to go.