Sparrow poetry

[tc573]

I am looking for a poem and author/poet where the sparrow is described as a worker with brown coat and getting into fights

[scotman]

Could be Sparrow by Norman MacCaig ?

[tc573]

Thank you Scotman this is it I forgot just how wonderful it is

[AB Editor]

Is this the one?

From here: http://forum.poetryco.../viewtopic.php?t=6959

Sparrow by Norman MacCaig
He's no artist
His taste in clothes is more
dowdy than gaudy.
And his nest - that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak,
woudl call it a slum.

To stalk solitary on lawns,
to sing solitary in midnight trees,
to glide solitary over grey Atlantics -
not for him: he'd rather
a punch up in a gutter.

He carries what learning he has
lightly - it is, in fact, based only
on the usefulness whose result
is survival. A proletarian bird.
No scholar.

But when winter soft-shoes in
and these other birds -
ballet dancers, musicians, architects -
die in the snow
and freeze to branches
watch him happily flying
on the O-levels and A-levels
of the air.