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, from 'Wintering Out' (1972)