The Bird in Pemba's Garden (Titmouse)

Lyrics

[Intro]
In Pemba's garden, May 15, 1850,
The air thick with oak's sharp tang.

[Verse 1]
Pemba knelt by the rosebush,
Her fingers in the soil, cool at 12 degrees Celsius,
Digging for the grub that Carl Linnaeus named
Melolontha melolontha in 1758.
It wriggled, white and fat,
Like a secret buried under Saxony's green.
She held it up to the fading light,
Dusk at 8 PM, when they take flight.

[Chorus]
Oh, cockchafer, you May bug,
Buzzing in the devil's orchestra,
Your fanned antennae catching the wind,
From the horse-drawn cart loaded with leaves.
Not a bird, but you fly like one,
In Pemba's quiet plot, where roses bend.

[Verse 2]
The glass jar on the windowsill,
Scratched lid from years of hunts,
Filled with your kin, collected by children
For bounties in French villages, 19th century games.
Pemba whispered to you,
Nature's system is a constant guide,
As Linnaeus said, truth in your hairy form.
You ate the leaves, left holes like lace.

[Bridge]
Hidden under beds, jars of you,
While farmers shook trees at dawn,
Cloths spread below, as in Bavaria's almanac, 1842.
The earthy musk clings,
Mixed with crushed oak's bitter scent.

[Verse 3]
Pemba watched you emerge,
Reddish-brown, from the ground's embrace,
Mass emergences in cockchafer years,
Darkening the air, as the Royal Society noted in 1789.
You fed on her oaks, mated in the twilight,
A cycle spanning years, underground dreams.

[Chorus]
Oh, cockchafer, you May bug,
Buzzing in the devil's orchestra,
Your fanned antennae catching the wind,
From the horse-drawn cart loaded with leaves.
Not a bird, but you fly like one,
In Pemba's quiet plot, where roses bend.

[Outro]
Pemba smiled, placed you back,
In the garden's hush, your hum lingers.