18. The Birds

I dreamt a deserted graveyard, wide-spread,
And heard the duet of my soul and the dead,
Among flowered lawns and tombs cross-adorned.
God wills that what falls should ignite what is born.
And the shadow filled me.

———————————Around me, a crowd
Cheerful, heedless of my sad head bowed,
In this field, bedchamber of ultimate sleep,
Free sparrows played truant and hide-and-seek.
Eternity teased by the here and the now!
They came and went, singing, flying, hopping about,
Scratching at death with their sharp little claws,
Smoothing their beaks on a statue’s sad nose,
Pecking at the tombs, those seedbeds of mystery.
I took these winged noisemakers seriously;
Cried out: — “You harpies! Grant peace to the dead!”
“We’re sparrows,” is what these impious creatures said.
“Silence! Go off!” I retorted, harsh, groaningly.
They flew off because I was strongest—but only,
One still remained behind, and, with his bold music,
Lifted his tail up and said: “Who’s this old classic?”

As they all departed, furious, unjolly,
Shouting, and glaring at a giant black holly
A tree lost in thought near a tomb: a wise man,
Suddenly grabbed me by the sleeve as I ran,
And said: “This is these birds’ purpose, their rightness.
Leave them alone. We need this ray of brightness.
God sends them. They bring life to the cemetery.
Man, they are the joy of all nature’s hymnary.
They take its light, the murmur from the stream,
From the star, the smile of dawn’s enchanted gleam;
Wherever a wise man laughs, they carry his joy,
And bring it to us; shadows blaze at their employ;
They fill their beaks with schoolchildren’s calls;
Through man and grass, through bushes, waterfalls,
They go plundering joy in the vast universe.
They possess a reason which seems to you perverse.
They pity us lolling in sadness, far from their throng;
And, when they are full of their game and song,
Of eclogues and kisses, all the gossip that’s made,
They make nests in April beneath the green shade,
They come running, joyful, charming, lightly, they rave,
To pour it all into our frightening graves,
And come, from palaces, from woodland and hut,
To empty this brightness all into our night!
When May brings them back to us, O dreamer, we say:
Here they are! Everything stirs, stones, mounds, hay;
The smallest shrub speaks, and the grass is ecstatic;
The weeping willow sings, its phrasing emphatic;
The old yew tree, chattering now, confesses;
They gossip about man’s life with the hearses;
They unsnick the clasps of the too-pompous shrouds;
Mocking our marble; spell old words aloud;
And I, who am here amongst old, sulky weeds
Before whom the Lie shows its ugliest screed
Where shamelessly I’m of the tourist crowd,
I find it just, friends, that by reading aloud
Epitaphs styling dead as blessed in the hereafter,
They should make the whole graveyard burst with laughter.

Paris, May 1835.