Flamingo.

• Author: Larkin, Joan
• Position: Poem

Flamingo Bird of Light, Long Neck, Thing-That-Is-Red-- she knows nothing of names nor emperor who ate her tongue with peacocks' brains and lampreys' semen. She wades in the dazzle of shallows, scoops mud with her beak, sifts for plankton. Her mate, too, makes the thick crop-milk, knows their chick's cry apart from others. Thousands, blood-red-feathered to the horizon, swim thin air, twist-preen, bow--...