Two Poems by Sarah Westcott

The last ʻōʻō

If we could hear him in the woods,
would we listen, would we care?

Would we recognise his song,
a voice it took this world to shape —

a voice it took this world to shape,
a voice that sings to us of guilt,

a voice that sings to us of guilt,
complicity. We turn and turn

amongst the trees. We turn and turn
away, bowed to the keyboard’s face,

bowed to these keys, our own lost songs.
Would we listen, would we hear

our own music if we could bear
him singing in the world again?

The Kauai ʻōʻō was a small, honey-eating songbird once common in the forests of Hawaii. The last bird of the species, a male, was recorded singing in 1987.

The field

Like a film, a reel of grass, — all the learning done, not yet begun, just setting out, round the next
lap: come to no harm, no harm.

The dawn in dawn, the beauty of the cambers, high earth up in the weathers, the foxglove bud, the
moving blood out and back, the ringing round, the ringing round, the whole belled longing.

A girl ran. A girl grew up and left, a girl dreams backwards and forwards through the same eyes, a
girl begets a girl begets a world. A new field is a new world, each morning.

A poem found the girl one day. The field found the girl. One day she found a new field. In the first
field some children are playing.

It is mostly late-afternoon and the field opens into space and in the girl’s body it is early. We have
not done all our loving yet —

Sarah Westcott has published two collections with Pavilion Poetry - Slant Light, and Bloom, which was shortlisted for the Ledbury prize for best second collections in 2023. Her second pamphlet, Pond, a hybrid piece, was published in 2024. She is researching a PhD on the poem as a multi-species event.