#143 Swifts (Anne Stevenson)

 Estoy leyendo "Vesper Flights" de Helen Macdonald, la autora del excelentísimo "H is for Hawk". Los ensayos sobre la naturaleza es quizá uno de mis géneros preferidos y Macdonald no tiene par. "Vesper Flights" es una colección de ensayos, entre los que está uno que más o menos cambió mi vida en el 2017. Si conseguí convencer a varias personas a emprender un road trip de dos días para poder ver el eclipse solar fue porque me topé con un artículo de Helen Macdonald en el New York Times que me impresionó tanto que pensé que perderme el eclipse, tan sólo a un par de estados de distancia, sería perder una de las grandes oportunidades de la vida. ¿Conducir desde Washington DC hasta Carolina del Sur para ver los 7 minutos que dura un eclipse? Así fue. Y vaya si valió la pena y si no han sido quizá los 7 minutos más emocionantes de mi vida.

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"Vesper Flights", el ensayo que da título a la colección, habla de los vencejos (swifts), esas aves extrañísimas, semiapocalípticas, que vuelan rapidísimo y sin descanso, sin bajar a la tierra ni siquiera para recoger material para sus nidos. "Their nests are made of things snatched from the air," Macdonald escribe, "strands of dried grass pulled aloft by thermals; molted pigeon-breast feathers; flower petals, leaves, scraps of paper, even butterflies... They mate on the wing. And while young martins and swallows return to their nests after their first flights, young swifts do not. As soon as they tip themselves free of the nest hole, they start flying, and they will not stop flying for two or three years, bathing in rain, feeding on airborne insects, winnowing fast and low to scoop fat mouthfuls of water from lakes and rivers." 

Al atardecer y al amanecer, bandadas de vencejos ascienden más de 3000 metros por razones complejas que Macdonald explica en el ensayo, principalmente para orientarse mucho mejor. Esto es lo que se llaman "vesper flights", y Macdonald, en ese movimiento tan magistral que logran los mejores ensayos sobre la naturaleza, consigue hacer de los vencejos una fábula sobre la comunidad y la toma de decisiones colectivas en tiempos difíciles, como la pandemia. 

Entre el ensayo de Macdonald y este poema de Anne Stevenson ya no es posible mirar a los vencejos sin sentir una mezcla de admiración y extrañeza.

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Por lo general pongo los links de donde saco las fotos solamente para reconocer el robo, pero este me ha llamado la atención porque cita una entrevista en la que Anne Stevenson habla con gran admiración—una admiración que comparto—de Dana Gioia. Y al final hay un poema muy bueno, "How Poems Arrive", que Stevenson le dedicó.

(via)

SWIFTS

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.

The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.

But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child

You shout, 'The swifts are back!'

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther

Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.

Swereee swereee. Another. And another.

It's the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.

These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.

But a shift of wing, and they're earth-skimmers, daggers

Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for

Earth is forbidden to them, water's forbidden to them,

All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,

They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —

When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,

The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things

Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.

And they stayed there. 'Well,' said the Raven, after years of this,

'I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky

On condition that you give up rest.'

'Yes, yes,' screamed the swifts, 'We abhor rest.

We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,

Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.

Let us be free, be air!'

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.

He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.

He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.

Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so

We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but

Bolts in the world's need: swift

Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world's breathing.

The grace to say they live in another firmament.

A way to say the miracle will not occur,

And watch the miracle.