Tag: prose

“The Birds” — Emmy Bridgwater

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“The Birds”

by

Emmy Bridgwater

from

Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (ed. Penelope Rosemont)

“The Birds”

One

He pulled the blanket over and he drew up the blind. The yellow mice rushed into their corners. The spiders ran behind the pictures. The lecture began on Christ the Forerunner. Only the very young mice sat still to listen. The blackbirds flying near the window passed the word to each other. “Come on. Here we may find something. Something to put our beaks into.” Snap went the window cord; down came the blind. The birds, disappointed, did the best they could. They flew nearer and nearer the windowpane. It was dangerous. It wasn’t worth it. But they wanted to get the news—to be the first to know—to pass on the news. What had come to the lecture on Christ? Did one still lie under the blankets? The spiders laughed into their hands to think of the birds outside all twittering and over-anxious.

Two

As she walked into the garden the birds flew down to her pecking at her lips, “Don’t do that,” she cried, “It’s mine. I’m alive you know.” “Well, why don’t you wear colors?” She heard them talking. “Dead people walk, but they don’t wear colors. They scream and they talk too.” The birds went on chattering about dead people. They all perched up on the holly bush but they didn’t peck the soft berries. They just stared down at her. All of them stared with their little black beady eyes. They were looking at her red lips.

Three

“Sing a song for the King. Come on, now sing.” The child was shy to start, but her mother, standing behind her gave her a little push which startled her into opening her mouth and she began, “Wasn’t that a dirty dish to set before the king?” “Begin again dear,” whispered her mother, “at the first line,” “O.k. ma,” and she chanted, “Four and twenty black… oooh,” for a peacock had walked in front of her and spread out its tail and croaked “Frico. Frico.” The little girl went very white. “Frico. Frico,” she said. The birds, who had been sitting on the cornice as part of the decoration, flew down into the court and circled about the heads of the King and Courtiers, fluttering as close as possible. All the people flapped their hands helplessly. Suddenly the little girl pointed at the King. “You must get out of here,” she said in a grown-up voice. “This is their Palace.”

“Darwinism” — Walt Whitman

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“Darwinism” by Walt Whitman

Running through prehistoric ages—coming down from them into the daybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, and so brought onward—(a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antique races and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c., and giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and their politics as well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or less inherit,) appear those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and goddesses—ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously reversing the antique,) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys, baboons—a theory more significant perhaps in its indirections, or what it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as they seem, and angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose each other, are not both theories to be possibly reconcil’d, and even blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them? Better still, out of them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to arise?)

Of this old theory, evolution, as broach’d anew, trebled, with indeed all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is so needed as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakably tenacious, enfeebling superstitions—is fused, by the new man, into such grand, modest, truly scientific accompaniments—that the world of erudition, both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better’d and broaden’d in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the problem of origins, human and other, is not the least whit nearer its solution. In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its vehemence, cannot be allow’d to dominate every thing else, and will have to take its place as a segment of the circle, the cluster—as but one of many theories, many thoughts, of profoundest value—and re-adjusting and differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as inexplicable and unreachable as before—maybe more so.

Then furthermore—What is finally to be done by priest or poet—and by priest or poet only—amid all the stupendous and dazzling novelties of our century, with the advent of America, and of science and democracy—remains just as indispensable, after all the work of the grand astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorers of the last hundred years—and the wondrous German and other metaphysicians of that time—and will continue to remain, needed, America and here, just the same as in the world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a thousand, or several thousand years ago. I think indeed more needed, to furnish statements from the present points, the added arriere, and the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day. Only, the priests and poets of the modern, at least as exalted as any in the past, fully absorbing and appreciating the results of the past, in the commonalty of all humanity, all time, (the main results already, for there is perhaps nothing more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more important modern combinations, and new relative adjustments,) must indeed recast the old metal, the already achiev’d material, into and through new moulds, current forms.

Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modern science wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes of light—as Democracy waits for it’s—through first-class metaphysicians and speculative philosophs—laying the basements and foundations for those new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer American poems.