The tree sparrow must have landed there to sing
within the forest it believed was still standing
green and fruitful on the island’s cliffs;
these birches, rowans, willows now levelled below turf,
but still providing fuel for household fires,
their waterlogged trunks and branches drawn out of the mire
of dark peat to feed its constant flame.
But still that bird sang. Syllables and notes came
from its beak, that continual cheep and chirp
like the chip of these blades the people later gripped
when they were shipped off to the mainland,
the strangeness of their axes pulsating through their hands.