Although the aepyornis
 or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
 with them in size--the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is
a symbol of justice.

 This bird watches his chicks with
 a maternal concentration-and he's
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks--his legs
 their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard

 is not more suspicious.How
 could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
used even as a riding-beast, respect men
 hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
making the neck move as if alive
and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches

 might be decoyed and killed!Yes, this is he
whose plume was anciently
the plume of justice; he
 whose comic duckling head on its
great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness
when he stands guard,

 in S-like foragings as he is
 preening the down on his leaden-skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda's very own
 from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich-egg.And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it

 grazed on as a gift to an
 emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one, who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
 in lake or sea till only the head shows.

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.

 Six hundred ostrich-brains served
 at one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent
and desert spear, jewel-
gorgeous ugly egg-shell
 goblets, eight pairs of ostriches
in harness, dramatize a meaning
always missed by the externalist.

 The power of the visible
 is the invisible; as even where
no tree of freedom grows,
so-called brute courage knows.
 Heroism is exhausting, yet
it contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare
the harmless solitaire

 or great auk in its grandeur;
 unsolicitude having swallowed up
all giant birds but an alert gargantuan
 little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird.
This one remaining rebel
is the sparrow-camel.