Part 22 of a daily series of readings of his favourite poetry by Dr Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary. Today's poem is Short Ode to the Cuckoo by W.H. Auden.

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~ Short Ode to the Cuckoo by W.H. Auden ~

No one now imagines you answer idle questions
How long shall I live? How long remain single?
Will butter be cheaper? - nor does your shout make
husbands uneasy.

Compared with arias by the great performers
such as the merle, your two-note act is kid-stuff:
our most hardened crooks are sincerely shocked by
your nesting habits.

Science, Aesthetics, Ethics, may huff and puff but they
cannot extinguish your magic: you marvel
the commuter as you wondered the savage.
Hence, in my diary,

where I normally enter nothing but social
engagements and, lately, the death of friends, I
scribble year after year when I first hear you,
of a holy moment.