What’s it like to be a human the bird asked

Posted on by Live & Learn

What’s it like to be a human
the bird asked

I myself don’t know
it’s being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful
being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat
breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly
it’s being on fire
with a nest made of ashes
eating bread
while filling up on hunger
it’s dying without love
it’s loving through death

That’s funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air

~ Anna Kamienska, from “Funny”

Notes: Poem via Alive on All Channels. (Thanks Beth). Art by Klára Piknerová (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

31 thoughts on “What’s it like to be a human the bird asked”

    1. And that’s where he arrives in my imagination, my mad grandfather, a blur-boy of white singlet and shorts, short sharp hair, blue eyes, charging like a knight towards an invisible enemy. There’s no one watching. It’s just him after school on a grey afternoon. Blackbirds have settled on the playing fields. The bounce of his stride echoes in the pole. It’s not fibreglass but wood. The wind must think it’s a mast and he a sail too small for lifting. His pace quickens, his knees lift, the blackbirds turn. Down the cinderway he comes, crisp crunch-crunch-crunch, man on the end of a stick. Mouth pursed out and open he blows a wind-note with each step, whuu-whuu-whuu, announcing himself, warning the air that he is coming. His eyes are locked on the concrete trap. It’s his entranceway. The pole lowers, wavers slightly. A hard clack is the last sound Grandfather hears on earth. And here he is, Abraham in lift-off, his soul bubbling as he climbs, entering the upper air with perfect propulsion and ascension both. An instant and he no longer needs the pole. Hands it off. It falls to ground, a distant double-bounce off the solid world below. The blackbirds take fright, rise and glide to the goalmouth. Amazement blues my grandfather’s eyes. He’s at the apex of a triangle, a pale angular man-bird. His legs air-walk, his everything unearthed as he crosses the bar above us all. There is a giddy gulp of the Impossible and he sort of rolls over in the sky, pressed up against the iron clouds where God must be watching. His mind whites out. His body believes it is winged, has vaulted into some other way of being. Abraham Swain is Up There and Away, paddling the air above the ordinary and just for a moment praying: let me never fall to earth.

      ~ Niall Williams, History of the Rain. (Bloomsbury Publishing. May, 2014)

      1. Sorry – i hit the wrong button…my eyes welled as I read this – it’s sheer beauty, let alone the subject matter. His grandfather soars and Niall words provide the lift. This is great, David…

  7. How interesting. Never asked myself how we feel fom a bird’s view point…. shows a bit our very limits in just about everything, doesn’t it!?
    Love this and also your 2nd poem. Happy Sunday.

    We are nearing ours – in Switzerland it’s ‘Thanksgiving’ but it’s actually called ‘Thanks-, Repentance- and Prayer-Day’ – only we call it in short Prayer-Day. Isn’t that interesting too? I would have thought that it’s mostly Thanksgiving and boy, are there so many reasons for being thankful!!!! In France we shall have our Thanksgiving on the first Sunday of October….

      1. Thanks. We HAD a most beautiful, festive day with a service full of gratitude, joy and love, more wonderful food and drinks to share than anyone of us could imagine, much talking, exchanges, simply the best.
        And another one (in France) to come!

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