But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such, that transient Thing,
The human Soul . . .
—William Wordsworth, “Persuasion”
In our Cape Town kitchen, a hadada
ibis (Bostrychia hagedash), or
“hadedah,” mimicking its strident three-
note call onomatopoeically,
flies in, eats the kibbles left by Minou,
craps in a pot of Mexican bean stew,
and flies out, like the sparrow in the tale
told the king by the Venerable Bede*
that flies in through the gable at one end
of the hall in which the jarls are feasting
after raiding their detested neighbors
and exits, quid pro quo, at the other.
To which I can but add: one’s peck must needs
exceed one’s beak—or what’s a metaphor?!
*Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum / Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 CE)