Serenades

The Irish nightingale

Is a sedge-warbler,

A little bird with a big voice

Kicking up a racket all night.

Not what you'd expect 

From the musical nation.

I haven't even heard one--

Nor an owl, for that matter.

My serenades have been 

The broken voice of a crow

In a draught or a dream,

The wheeze of bats

Or the ack-ack

Of the tramp corncrake

Lost in a no man's land

Between combines and chemicals.

So fill the bottles, love,

Leave them inside their cots.

And if they do wake us, well,

So would the sedge-warbler.

Seamus Heaney