Hello Colin,
            I read this piece with enjoyment and would like to offer a few disconnected observations/reactions based on a first reading. Please use or disregard them as you see fit.
1. I think the poem as a whole would benefit from being trimmed. At the very first I was going to use an expression like `the poem is too busy´ or `there´s too much happening´. However, I´ve decided that the rather hectic tone suits the subject, but I do still feel that you could cut some lines and generally tighten the poem up.
2. I found the tendency to give the gannets human feelings, emotions and thoughts didn´t really come off - phrases like `believe that what they share is unique´ work against and even undermine the force of the representation of the gannet´s behaviour, for me at least.
3.  In a few places I felt the phrasing and choice of words wasn´t working to the best advantage. In line 6 the combination of `raucous´ and `rancorous´ is one that may strike the ear as dramatic in the heat of composition but I question whether it stands the test of time. I´ve sometimes made such pairings of similar sounds myself thinking that it carries a powerful musicality, but I´ve felt with my own attempts in that line that it´s better to let them go, though it is a disappointment. I´d also question `beckoning islands´ in S3 which sounds a bit of a poeticism/cliché. I´d try to get rid of `mid´ later in S3.
4.  In contrast to those niggles about language, I thought there were many excellent phrases, e.g. line 8 in S1, the first 2 lines of S2, the first 4 lines of S4 and the first 2 of S5, although I´d try to change the word `beings´ there - `creatures´ maybe?

I hope these rambling thoughts are useful in working on the poem.


Best wishes,   Mike





--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Gannets

Not alone over ocean;
in colonies of thousands
they nest now.
On flat tops gather like fallen snow
to hear only
the raucous, rancorous calling of their own kind,
shoulder to shoulder in squalor jostle,
forge alliance in this colony of rivals,
squabble on rock
bare and bleached by their own guano,
pair-up and defend each meagre patch with blade beaks,
as they mate, believe that what they share is unique,
the one possible joining in a world of white wings.

Dazzled by dawn sun I see how
their plumage outshines the moon,
as they open their beaks hear how
they yet croak with the voice of the crow,
that they cannot utter
a word in praise of the world or each other,
guard eggs more precious than themselves;
what hope they have
held softly in a porcelain shell.

They have lived over ragged waves
and swum over ships wrecked
on the rocks of beckoning islands,
flown upon cliffs that resist surf and produce nothing
but angry foam.
They have left the beached carcasses of whales where they lay
but here on the plateau mid wave and heaven
have then delivered each gnomic dome,
aspire to what they have not known before.

The sea's gift is merely an odour here,
scales and frizzled bone.
The plundered silver mined from wave's wall
fades to a stain and dust in the spring gale.
Wind bearing up the sheer side
almost lifts spray to these heights
while Himalayan clouds melt
and move South in their own time.

These beings dwell by a sea too great
to behold with a single stare,
encounter the coming and going of days
with their squalls of rain and fresh sleet,
beneath sky blue as the Buddha's hair.
It is not the wing but the eye that is free.


__________________________________________