George Bruce, feeding his garden sparrows, ponders man’s inhumanity to man (he is writing at the time of the Balkan wars) and his own inner regrets and shortcomings.

The two poems come from Today Tomorrow, his Collected Poems 1933-2000 (Polygon £14.99).       
               
REBUKE

There was bread left over
at breakfast, a heel of brown bread,
and I broke it and put it on the stone
ledge at the window: and sparrows came,
a blackbird and a black-capped tit,
and it all went quickly.

And the next morning I did the same,
and it went quickly. Then
the bitter wind came and I kept
the window tight-shut, and a sparrow,
one sparrow, sat on a bush by the window
and cursed me in cheeps. So 

I put out more bread, and its friends came
and munched and munched and munched,
and the next day the wind blew colder,
and I kept shut the window;
and the cheeping and cheepering went on.
Why should I fear a sparrow’s rebuke
When Sarajevo weeps its eyes out?

REPENTANCE

Now I am making a brown parcel
of all my tomorrows, each one a song
(but of how many I do not know)
to put on the ledge for the cheeping sparrows.

I could guess them, yet still would not know
how to deal with my stained futures.
Sparrows know how to treat
each moment of the day.

In the peek of an eye,
in the flirt of a wing,
in the peck of a beak
in the dust – they know
a  meal from a mote.