I read this morning that one third of America’s birds have vanished. Of course we shouldn’t call it America. North America? The United States? The birds are gone. I also read this morning that Thalidomide is back.
I remember a line by the poet Edith Sodergran: “I am blood’s whisper in men’s ears…”
This does nothing for the birds. I don’t know how to help them. My local town council is busy banning books while the forests burn.
Maybe the politicians will take books to the burning forests. And then they’ll hand out Thalidomide tablets.
*
I’m thinking of these lines by Cesar Vallejo, the great Peruvian poet:
“There are blows in life so violent—I can’t answer!
Blows as if from the hatred of God; as if before them,
the deep waters of everything lived through
were backed up in the soul … I can’t answer!”
(translated by Robert Bly)
Oh I can’t answer but I’m searching the corrugated quick of the page.
Again I come back to the birds and Thalidomide.
**
Andrew Solomon says that depression is “grief out of proportion to circumstance.”
The circumstances suck.
Here’s a link to an article on the return of Thalidomide:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00002018-199921030-00002
Planet of the Blind 