Divination by birds.

I've never looked to cards to tell my chances;
the stars in their courses I've long set aside;
I know no Sybils in their deep drugged trances;
Gypsies and crystal balls I've never tried --
They'd uncover secrets I would rather hide.

I have given up on numbers , they reel past
like symbols on a spinning fruit machine
in fixed or random order , but inexorably at last
I only know the jackpot will have been
the final numbers I'll have ever seen .

No chicken entrails have spread upon the block
foretelling what's to come ; no slaughtered ox has bled ;
no runes have spoken , carved upon a rock;
I have not called up spirits of the dead
nor read a future on my palm outspread.

No carefully laid i-ching or tarot card
nor anything from dreams or second sight
have shown me promises ; sortilege is too hard.

But still I find my auguries of delight
in hearing the song of passing birds in flight .