Their cries drown out the baby, pull me
to the window where birds are dropping,
crashing into glass with sick thumps
of flesh and beak and claw,
black eyes twisting furiously before they die.

They pile one atop the other,
grotesquely indiscriminate
in their arrangement of bloodied wings,
and I stare, my glassy eyes met by theirs,
outstaring me forever.

When the pact is over and the last stragglers,
finally sensible of the suicidal chaos,
turn and flee, I open the door,
shovel gulls like snow or shit,
watch downy plumes dance like ashes.

Legend says they raised him,
my saintly son, found a doe to suckle
him, built him a feather bed. Cenydd, 
godly, twisted child of mine,
knows that life was built by me.