An English woman I’ve never met calls to read me her new poem about the little Texas junco bird whose cry sounded to the early settlers like the words, no hope, no hope.

The bird knows what it has taken her half a lifetime to learn, she says, now that her body is covered with sores and she can no longer walk.

She needs me to go to the yard and listen to the desolate plea of a bird I’ve never seen, a song I’ve never heard: hope is no longer a thing with feathers.

Night pauses with its ear cocked: Listen to the cry of the female, she calls, who has drunk herself into a stupor and trills in high C the words, no hope, no hope.