Birds are Useful Symbols

Birds are useful symbols they are the poet’s friend they are most useful, I have found when they are dead.     This will make good poetry, I thought, when I saw a broken neck and bloody wings stretched out on concrete. Dark grey on light grey, spots of red – it may have been a pigeon (I did not care for detail. A moment of disgust and the image was enough; why pity a pigeon?     This will make good poetry, I thought). That was four years ago. Yesterday, amongst giant machines and men who build and destroy Babels daily with cars racing between constructions also sex shops multiplying themselves and oily fish and chip smells doing battle with the music of bars in the traffic of a windy afternoon, I saw a man clap a grey bird in his hands (it may have been a pigeon) and sneak across the road with it firmly in his grip. He walked it to slaughter or the SPCA; he held it with a violent tenderness for witchcraft or dinner or pity and I thought: This will make good poetry, I thought.

 

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