Spectator poems
From the magazine

Swiftian

Christopher James
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 27 September 2025
issue 27 September 2025

Listen, and you’ll hear the tick of the poem’s

stuttering heart; its breathless gush. But

notice how it becomes sullen now, dragging

its feet; refusing to play, until something

catches its eye — a swift, perhaps, dividing

the sky, its belly and beak skimming the

surface of a river. It longs to tell you how

swifts can live as long as twenty years; how

we find it impossible to tell the sexes apart,

and (as you knew) how it sleeps on the wing.

How quickly the poem forgets itself, because

now it has become the swift itself, piecing

together its nest of words, glued with saliva,

travelling a world without touching the ground.