Passenger Pigeons
Slowly the passenger pigeons increased, then suddenly their numbersBecame enormous, they would flatten ten miles of forestWhen they flew down to roost, and the cloud of their risingEclipsed the dawns. They became too many, they are all deadNot one remains.And the American bison: their hordesWould hide a prairie from horizon to horizon, great heads and storm-cloud shoulders, a torrent of life –How many are left? For a time, for a few years, their bonesTurned the dark prairies white.You, Death, you watch for these things.These explosions of life: they are your food.They make your feasts.But turn your great rolling eyesaway from humanityThose grossly craving black eyes. It is true we increase.A man from Britain landing in Gaul when Romehad fallenHe journeyed fourteen days inland through that beautifulRich land, the orchards and rivers and the looted villas: he reports he sawNo living man. But now we fill the gaps.In spite of wars, famines and pestilences we are quite suddenlyThree billion people: our bones, ours too, would makeWide prairies white, a beautiful snow of unburied bones:Bones that have twitched and quivered in the nights of love,Bones that have shaken with laughter and hung slackin sorrow, coward bonesWorn out with trembling, strong bones broken on the rack,bones broken in battle,Broad bones gnarled with hard labor, and the little bonesof sweet young children, and the white empty skulls,Little carved ivory wine-jugs that used to containPassion and thought and love and insane delirium, where nowNot even worms liveRespect humanity, Death, theseshameless black eyes of yours,It is not necessary to take all at once – besides that,you cannot do it, we are too powerful,We are men, not pigeons; you may take the old, the uselessand helpless, the cancer-bitten and the tender young,But the human race has still history to make. For look – look nowAt our achievements: we have bridled the cloud-leaper lightning,a lion whipped by a man, to carry our messagesAnd work our will, we have snatched the thunderboltOut of God’s hands. Ha? That was little and last year –for now we have takenThe primal powers, creation and annihilation; we makenew elements, such as God never saw,We can explode atoms and annul the fragments, nothing leftbut pure energy, we shall use itIn peace and war – “Very clever,” he answered in his thin piping voice,Cruel and a eunuch.Roll those idiot black eyes of yoursOn the field-beasts, not on intelligent man,We are not in your order. You watched the dinosaursGrow into horror: they had been little elves in the ditchesand presently became enormous with leaping flanksAnd tearing teeth, plated with armor, nothing couldstand against them, nothing but you,Death, and they died. You watched the sabre-tooth tigersDevelop those huge fangs, unnecessary as our sciences,and presently they died. You have their bonesIn the oil-pits and layer rock, you will not have ours.With pain and wonder and labor we have bought intelligence.We have minds like the tusks of those forgotten tigers,. hypertrophied and terrible,We have counted the stars and half-understood them,we have watched the farther galaxies fleeing awayfrom us, wild herdsOf panic horses – or a trick of distance deceived by the prism –we outfly falcons and eagles and meteors,Faster than sound, higher than the nourishing air;we have enormous privilege, we do not fear you,We have invented the jet-plane and the death-bomband the cross of Christ – “Oh,” he said, “surelyYou’ll live forever” – grinning like a skull, covering his mouthwith his hand – “What could exterminate you?”
Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash