The Dove Has A Word

With a sprig in my beak, I repeatedly seek For a spot where a poor bird may rest, While tumultuous man strives in vain for a plan That may build me a permanent nest. But I'm sick of this search. All I ask is a perch In a cope, neither gaudy nor grand; And they need me, they say in a 'passionate' way; But as soon as I venture to land There's a clashing of scabbards; a barking of dogs And I'm off once again to the ambient fogs. I'd a job long ago - for old Noah, you know And I hadn't much trouble with that. But this mechanised age makes the searching a rage For a synthetic Mont Ararat. I have sought me a home o'er Locarno and Rome, O'er Geneva, week after drear week; I have hovered and wheeled and while the nations appealed But as soon as a haven I seek There's a beating of drums, and a yelling of fear, And I'm off once again to the calm stratosphere. And now sounds a cooing, a tentative wooing, Where Italy's olive groves gleam And they press a bland oil from the fruits of their soil. Is it olive they offer? Or, wait - they proffer That oil named for Pollux's twin That unguent, whose use 'mid Rome's rashly obtsue, Helped the Fascist ideal to win? If 'tis this, I am off to the cradle of stars For a home with old bluff, unequivocal Mars!