Nothing can happen to birds

.......
for nothing can happen to birds that has not

happened before: we though are beasts with a sense of
real occasion, of beginnings and endings,
which is the reason

we like to keep our clocks punctual, as Nature’s
never is. Seasons she has, but no Calendar:
thus every year the strawberries ripen
and the autumn-crocus

flares into blossom on unpredictable
dates. Such a Schlamperei cannot be allowed an
historian: with us it’s a point of honor
to keep our birth-days

and wedding-days, to rejoice or to mourn, on
the right one. Henceforth the First of October
shall be special for you and us, as the Once when
you quit the Public

Realm to private your ways and snudge in a quiet
you so deserve. Farewell, and do not wince at
our sick world: it is genuine in age to be
happily selfish.

– Wystan Hugh Auden, ‘Lines to Dr Walter Birk on his Retiring from General Practice’,
geschrieben in Kirchstetten.