Carol Rumens's poem of the weekPoetryA dead bird stumbled upon during a walk leads the poet on an inward journey confronting historical and biological cycles and the act of writing itself
Dear Bird
A dead bird in the snow is not how I wish
to begin this walk, yet there it is, feathers
all bloodied and frozen to the ground,
giving flight to cause and effect, the mind
trampled by where it has gone before,
an image faithfully lodged, falling along
sandy shores and leafy trails, in the chaos
of a lonely night, dear bird might you share
your name, must I nurse you till the end,
patch you with experience, pitch storylines
to your wound, killed by man killed by animal,
the reflection of a tree, well, you seem to be
thriving, as metaphor as travelling companion,
and whom to blame whom to assign fault,
an egress offering sanctuary I kneel and gently
raise you from your bed, hold you in my hand,
my body temperature meeting yours, a trickle
of blood beginning to line my palm, your death
now in slow motion, dear bird who hasn’t lost
their way, forsaken the known upended by
the unknown, determined predetermined
no need to go there, to the sky we look for
what is coming, the two birds in endless loop
voracious hunger, a language not ours
and ours to run with.
This week, we’re revisiting the work of Howard Altmann, whose most recent poem of the week, Composition, appeared in the spring of 2022. Altmann’s poems are haunted spaces, and Dear Bird makes particular room in its semi-punctuated syntax for the complications inherent in the poet’s personal and ancestral story of emigration.
After the unhappy discovery of the dead bird – not yet the “dear bird” of the title – Altmann’s speaker turns the focus inward, where it seems to cause disintegration. The rational coupling of “cause and effect” takes “flight” and the painful effect on memory or memories aroused is reflected in the description of “the mind / trampled by where it has gone before … ” Claimed as an “image”, its locations named as “sandy shores”, “leafy trails” and “the chaos / of a lonely night”, the bird seems to represent other deaths, and, possibly, the other poems in which Altmann has configured them. Perhaps in Dear Bird there’s also the fear of the image becoming inescapable in future chaotic nights. But in the same sentence, in line eight, as if the bird and the associated deaths had been re-owned by the speaker, the address is direct and almost conciliatory: “dear bird might you share / your name … ”.
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Now the question of reluctant obligation is set off: “must I … ” The verb “nurse” encompasses acts of writerly transformation: poets typically “patch” imagery with experience and prose writers are frequently required to sell or “pitch” their “storylines”. Here, the storylines are pitched to the bird’s wound rather than presented to an agent or editor, so perhaps there’s also a shadow from the noun, “pitch”, a suggestion of the sealing power in the heavy residue of distilled tar.
Absent commas in the line somehow insist that apparent oppositions cohere, eg “killed by man killed by animal” and “thriving, as metaphor as travelling companion … “ The speaker is “an egress” (a way out or a process of going out) that also offers the interiority of “sanctuary”. The bird, when the speaker lifts it, may be partly thawed by the human palm, but the resultant “trickle / of blood” could also be that of the human protagonist, now wounded and dying.
In its extended conclusion, the poem rejects a negative view of the complications and antitheses it has confronted, and still confronts, in the effort to explain historical and biological cycles. The frozen bird (and the “dear bird” it became) are imaginatively released and become “the two birds in endless loop / voracious hunger … ” This “hunger” includes the instinct to breed, the redemptive force which enables survival. It is no less a creative and intellectual hunger, I think, and the evocation of “a language not ours / and ours to run with,” is a memorable tribute to the immigrant’s resilience and energy.
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