Starlings

By W. S. Di Piero b. 1945

Snarls, bread trucks, yeast

breathing inside huddled bags,

and sleepers completing lives

behind their gray windows.

A whistle on the phonewires,

feathers, twitches, whistling

down to the hot loaves.

Reeds everywhere, pulse,

flesh, flutes, and wakened sighs.

An answer. Radio news

and breathers behind our windows,

birds’ new voices changing,

changed, to the unforgiving

hunger screech of immigrants.

Source: The Restorers (The University of Chicago Press, 1992)

Biography

W.S. Di Piero was born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and earned degrees from St. Joseph’s College and San Francisco State College. A poet, essayist, art critic, and translator, Di Piero has taught at institutions such as Northwestern University, Louisiana State University, and Stanford, where he is professor emeritus of English and on faculty in the prestigious Stegner Poetry Workshop. Elected to the American Academy of . . .

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