“一只喧闹的麻雀栖于檐下，

一轮澄明的月亮悬于银河，

枝叶之间万分的和谐，

掩盖了男人的形象及喊叫。”

有次我被要求将威廉·巴特勒·叶芝的这首《爱之悲痛》（1925年）与该诗的1892年版本相对比，那是我第一次读到这几行诗。当时是1975年的夏天，我在参加S级的英语考试。从学术上来说，那是我光荣的一刻。这首诗歌形容了一位美丽女性的变革力量，她或许是特洛伊的海伦，也可能是叶芝所着迷的爱尔兰革命者昴德·冈昂。在她出现之前，自然的和谐掩盖了人类的颠覆本性。在她出现之后，这种本性得以传达。

在我脑海里萦绕三十九年而挥之不去的却是对麻雀的形容。“一只喧闹的麻雀”在我看来很奇怪，因为喧闹既不和谐也不孤单。有时候， 一只麻雀可能会吱吱叫或者拨弄羽毛，倒也可以说是喧闹。诗中随后描写到，一群麻雀在女子“现身”后出现了：“现身了，而在那瞬间聒噪的屋檐……”我了解那样的场景。

在我父母家，我的房间向外望去是一座老谷仓，大约有两辆广州巴士那么长。在当时的许多个夜晚，麻雀们会一字排开，站满了整个谷仓屋顶。肯定有数百只。因为声音毫不具攻击性，你或会逐渐忽略其喧闹，可是那动静确实浩大。我父母还住在那里。他们的花园跟以前差不多，虽然蓬乱了些。在谷仓旁边，每到季节还会有藤本月季应时盛开。在花园里还有其他鸟类，但不再有麻雀了。一只都不剩。我不知道为什么麻雀都走了，不过可能缘于一些人为活动，比如说农田里使用了杀虫剂。

上个月，我在修整过的东濠涌边散步，看见一只翠鸟掠过，犹如一道绿光，在广州的市中心可谓一道风景。在我看来，这便是对此项工程之成就的最佳诠释，比起旁边博物馆里悬挂着的党政要员庆贺照片还更生动。

在我所居住的二沙岛上，几乎时时都能听到鸟叫。我太太每天早上都磨好面包碎，然后撒在外面。大约有十种不同的鸟类曾经光顾过这些面包碎，其中大部分我都叫不出名字。 有只黑鸟身形巨大，如野鸡般大小，翅膀是暗褐色的，尾部呈扇形。还有些鸟跟八哥差不多大，是黑色的，只是在翅膀下带有白色的圆形纹路。有鸟喙是黄色的黑鹂，还有黑白花色的鹡鸰；有尖冠的小鸟，有胸前带有粉色羽毛的雀科小鸟；还有一些羽毛是绿色的，可我从未见它们吃食；另外那些则更为五颜六色。它们都很美丽，但还是观察麻雀群最有意思，通常有十只，但有时候能达到二十只。它们也观察我们，从树上鸟瞰，等着面包屑的到来，有时候还绕到厨房外，透过窗户，看看我太太是否准备要喂它们。

以前每天骑车上班前，我会在外面坐一个小时，进行晨读。冬天的时候光线不足，我便没有继续。现在我还未决定重拾此好，生怕惊扰了鸟儿们的早餐。我最后一本在外面读的书是《罗伯特·弗罗斯特的诗集》。弗罗斯特的诗《鸟鸣歌声永不复往日》或许是叶芝的《爱之悲痛》的对头。一个女子，可能是夏娃或者弗罗斯特过世的妻子艾莲娜，对鸟儿们产生了影响，使得它们的鸣叫无言地，却永恒地传递着她笑声中蕴含的讯息：

“鸟鸣歌声不复往日，

而她此行便是为此。”

"The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,

The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,

And all that famous harmony of leaves,

Had blotted out Man's image and his cry."

I first read these lines from W B Yeats's poem “The Sorrow of Love” (1925) when I was asked to compare this text with an  1892 version of the poem, in the 'S' Level English exam I sat in the Summer of 1975. Academically, this was my finest hour. The poem describes the transformative power of a beautiful woman, who might be Helen of Troy or the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne with whom Yeats was infatuated. Before her emergence, the harmony of nature conceals the discordant nature of mankind. After her emergence, it instead conveys it. 

What has stuck in my mind for thirty nine years is the description of sparrows. 'The brawling of a sparrow' is odd wording, as brawling is neither a harmonious nor a solitary action. The way a single sparrow sometimes cheeps and ruffles its feathers might, though, be said to resemble brawling.  A line later in the poem describes the sparrows as they appear after after the woman "arose": "Arose, and on that instant clamorous eaves, ...."  I knew that phenomenon.

My bedroom in my parents' house looked out onto an old barn, perhaps the length of two Guangzhou buses. Many evenings sparrows would perch along the entire length of the barn roof. There must have been hundreds. Although you could grow completely oblivious to it, since it was entirely unthreatening, the clamour was enormous. My parents still live in the same house. Their garden is much as before, though now unkempt. There is still a climbing rose that flowers in season beside the barn. There are other birds in the garden, but there are no longer any sparrows. Not one. I do not know why the sparrows have gone though it is probably because of some disruptive human activity, perhaps the use of pesticides in farming.  

Last month when I was walking beside the restored waterway Donghao Yong I saw a kingfisher shoot past as a flash of turquoise, a wonderful sight in central Guangzhou. I took it as testimony to the success of the project, more compelling evidence indeed than the visits of the Party dignatories whose celebratory photographs hang in the museum nearby.

Where I live on Ersha island there is the almost constant sound of birdsong.  My wife has taken each morning to putting out breadcrumbs which she grates the night before. The crumbs are now visited by perhaps as many as ten different species, most of which I do not recognise. There is a large bird, roughly the size of a pheasant, black except for dun coloured wings, with a fan-like tail. There are birds the size of starlings, black but with white roundels under their wings. There are blackbirds with yellow beaks. There are little black and white wagtails; small birds with pointed crests; birds like finches with pink plumage on their breasts; other birds with green plumage (though I have not seen these eat) and still others with plumage of many colours. They are all beautiful, but most enjoyable to watch are the flocks of sparrows, usually around ten but sometimes as many as twenty at a time.  They watch us too, looking from the trees for the arrival of the breadcrumbs, sometimes with one coming round to look in through the kitchen window to see whether my wife is about to feed them.

I used to sit out and read in the morning for an hour before cycling to work. I stopped doing so during the winter because there was not enough natural light. I now hesitate to start again as it will disturb the birds during their early feeding time.  One of the last books I read when I was sitting outside was an edition of The Poetry of Robert Frost. Frost's poem "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same" is perhaps the antithesis of Yeats's poem "The Sorrow of Love". A woman, who might be Eve or might be Frost's late wife Elinor, influences the birds so that their song wordlesslessly and permanently reflects the sound of her speech, carried to them by her laughter:

"Never again would birds' song be the same.

And to do that to birds was why she came."

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笔者家院中来啄食的麻雀