“The oriole entered the capital of dawn.
The sword of his song closed the sad bed.
Everything forever ended.”
A transparency through which the swallow weaves
Wallace Stevens
In almost every culture, birds were believed to speak the language of the soul.
Birds of Prophecy
Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mockingbirds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art."
~~ Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
“the woodpecker too
engulfed in sunset…
red leaves”
— Issa
“Rather paint the flying spirit of the bird than its feathers.”
Robert Henri
“Above, the feathered lyres,
The painted linnets, crowned
The untaught rustic choirs;” —
The Soledades, Gâongora’s Masque of the Imagination
