April 29, 2010
Another buttonhole in time for us, stitched lovingly and with an embroiderer’s thread, binding then to now, and now to later.
Us to them.
from HOLDFAST CROWBITER (c) Quintan Ana Wikswo
A German soldier carries his birds through the bombed out hayfields of Holland – on his back a small prison for birds, who can gaze out not at what is to come, but at what has already occurred.
On the shelf above, the cell for the Nazi carrier pigeons. On the shelf below, the cell for the falcon, who will be used to hunt the carrier pigeons sent by the British.
The Nazi boy has his eyes to the path directly ahead of him. He follows in footsteps. A path is worn in the soil. It is made by humans, for humans, and he follows where it leads. In front of him is time – he cannot know what the next step will bring.
The birds gaze out behind him, at what has happened.
The birds gaze into what is known: long steaming stretches of crater and trench, raped women, dead Gypsies, a thriving trade in prostitution throughout the cafes of France.
Soon they will be released from their cages. They will be up in the air. They will see the continent spread out below them, with all its borders and boundaries and lines. Its battlelines and barbed wire and barricades.
So many lines – only birds in the air can cross them.
Later.
But for now, time’s witnesses are strapped to our backs, where we carry the burden but do not confront it.
Trudging a footpath.
Memory is in a prison, waiting to take to the air, waiting to see our actions spread out on the surfaces below.
Like the men who sailed off the edges of this sea, there are areas inside us that contain a precipice.
These days, it’s in Arizona…
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WAR BIRDS #4 here
WAR BIRDS #3 here
WAR BIRDS #2 here
WAR BIRDS #1 here
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WAR HORSES #1 here