The birds are birds as we know them and are birds that cannot be known: they are common and uncommon, whirling and blurred: the birds are dead: the birds are gawking and gawky, tender and woebegone; the birds are dirty and transient and religious and encaged within effigies of themselves; the birds are man-made or they swarm or are migratorily indifferent. The birds hover and soar and loan themselves out for metaphorical exploitation. Very soon, they will fly off the page.