I.

My laboratory is on the basement level with soundproofing and no windows, so it’s only once I leave work that I can see and hear the birds without mediation. It’s funny, when you spend all day running analysis on birdsong, how unfamiliar listening to actual birds can be. Suddenly it’s not just Sample 34B: Erithacus rubecula, it’s that robin, there, in the hedge singing its little heart out. The movement always catches me off-guard, too: such abruptness, nearly invisible to the eye, just a hop and a whirr of the wings and they’re elsewhere. 

My smile fades as I pass the hedgerow and continue my walk back to my rented flat at the edge of town. It’s not that simple, for us. I’ve got a million and one things that I should be doing, and I can’t find the time to be where I need to be. It’s hard enough just to get myself to and from the laboratory, to take care of my own food and sleep, with that constant threat hanging over me. If I don’t publish soon they might take away my funding. My position at the university. Never mind that I’ve made so many breakthroughs; never mind that there is so much more I need to record. Never mind that there are whole lexicons I’ve yet to unlock. Never mind that it’s impossible to tell people about what the birds are saying because everybody seems to think that humans are the only ones speaking. Never mind that without this work I may not be able to stay in this country. Never mind that my mother is ill. 

How ill? I asked when the news came, my voice disappearing into the phone that held our words together across the oceans. She’s not going to last long, my aunt replied. But we’re taking care of her. No need for you to leave, no need for you to return. We know you’re busy. 

I used to dream in the language of my homeland but I have been here so long, in this sea-locked country under skies of cloud, that it is fading. 

My colleague who records whalesong told me that once, the songs of whales would have been audible in all the oceans of the whole planet. But now those songs are depleted, one whale’s call barely reaching the next, whole areas of the ocean silent where once they were blithely, heartbreakingly replete. I wonder how the whales feel, in their quieter oceans. Whether they remember how it used to be. 

Never mind that I do not know how to say what I need to say. The language of birds: a study. In this paper I forget how to talk the language of the scholar. All my words are winging their way to the wrong listeners, in the wrong languages. My dreams do not have words. 

II.

why have you forgotten 

how to speak

why

do your songs

no longer carry

any meaning

why

is there no song

from the sea

any more

where are 

the singers of the sea

our family

why do they

no longer sing

across the oceans

why is the land

silent too

what happened to your language

you, who are our family too

did you lose it

while you carved 

meaningless symbols into stones

and dead rushes

and dead trees

pulped rags

bright screens in dark rooms

no sound, no sense

why did you turn

away from us

when did you forget

how to talk

oh, wingless ones

why will you not listen

why are our songs

disappearing

will there ever be

any language

any meaning

any song

when we’re gone?

III.

At home I turn my laptop back on, set an analysis programme running while I make myself dinner. I drift between the pot on the hob and the laptop on the counter, opening the document that’s meant to be my job-saving publication. I eat mechanically, eyes on the screen. 

The last time that I heard my mother’s voice was three months ago, when she called me to wish me a happy birthday. Are you celebrating? She had asked, her voice right there in my ear. It was slightly husky. I wonder now if that was a sign, if I should have known that she was getting ill. Or was her voice always husky, and I had somehow forgotten? 

I’m just having a quiet one, I told her. When I put the phone down I wandered the flat for hours, not sure where the restlessness came from. I’d intended to watch a film, one of my favourites. But my feet kept on getting me up, walking me through to the kitchen, to the hallway. There was a tingling, an itch, where my shoulders met my back. 

I finish the last of my food and take the plate through to the kitchen to leave it in the sink. I force myself to turn back to the laptop. To analyse the recordings, to trace the lines of connection, the repetitions and the variations and the changing notes. To classify and categorise, to theorise. To remain open to the possibility of being wrong. To listen. 

I open a new tab, and look up the flights. My fingers hover over the keys. I could go to the airport tomorrow, and be at my aunt’s by the evening. Or I could fly the day after, or at the weekend. 

I try to remember what the words are in my mother-tongue for I came as soon as I could. For I’m sorry. For Why don’t we speak the way we used to. 

That night, I dream I am a bird. From the inside, hedges are cosy, exciting places of intersecting branches and safety. I hop and flutter as fast as thought, small brown bird that I am, wings a blur of quickstop motion. 

I open my beak, and let the songs pour forth.