Robinson Jeffers

"Passenger Pigeons" by Robinson Jeffers

Slowly the passenger pigeons increased, then suddenly their numbers 

Became enormous, they would flatten ten miles of forest 

When they flew down to roost, and the cloud of their rising 

Eclipsed the dawns. They became too many, they are all dead 

Not one remains. 

                                 And the American bison: their hordes 

Would hide a prairie from horizon to horizon, great heads and storm-cloud shoulders, a torrent of life - 

How many are left? For a time, for a few years, their bones 

Turned the dark prairies white. 

                                 You, Death, you watch for these things. 

These explosions of life: they are your food. 

They make your feasts. 

                                But turn your great rolling eyes 

             away from humanity 

Those grossly craving black eyes. It is true we increase. 

A man from Britain landing in Gaul when Rome 

              had fallen 

He journeyed fourteen days inland through that beautiful 

Rich land, the orchards and rivers and the looted villas: he reports he saw 

No living man. But now we fill the gaps. 

In spite of wars, famines and pestilences we are quite suddenly 

Three billion people: our bones, ours too, would make 

Wide prairies white, a beautiful snow of unburied bones: 

Bones that have twitched and quivered in the nights of love, 

Bones that have shaken with laughter and hung slack 

            in sorrow, coward bones 

Worn out with trembling, strong bones broken on the rack, 

            bones broken in battle, 

Broad bones gnarled with hard labor, and the little bones 

             of sweet young children, and the white empty skulls, 

Little carved ivory wine-jugs that used to contain 

Passion and thought and love and insane delirium, where now 

Not even worms live 

                                   Respect humanity, Death, these 

                  shameless black eyes of yours, 

It is not necessary to take all at once - besides that, 

                  you cannot do it, we are too powerful, 

We are men, not pigeons; you may take the old, the useless 

                    and helpless, the cancer-bitten and the tender young, 

But the human race has still history to make. For look - look now 

At our achievements: we have bridled the cloud-leaper lightning, 

         a lion whipped by a man, to carry our messages 

And work our will, we have snatched the thunderbolt 

Out of God's hands. Ha? That was little and last year - 

           for now we have taken 

The primal powers, creation and annihilation; we make 

           new elements, such as God never saw, 

We can explode atoms and annul the fragments, nothing left 

             but pure energy, we shall use it 

In peace and war - "Very clever," he answered in his thin piping voice, 

Cruel and a eunuch. 

                                  Roll those idiot black eyes of yours 

On the field-beats, not on intelligent man, 

We are not in your order. You watched the dinosaurs 

Grow into horror: they had been little elves in the ditches 

           and presently became enormous with leaping flanks 

And tearing teeth, plated with armor, nothing could 

           stand against them, nothing but you, 

Death, and they died. You watched the sabre-tooth tigers 

Develop those huge fangs, unnecessary as our sciences, 

         and presently they died. You have their bones 

In the oil-pits and layer rock, you will not have ours. 

           With pain and wonder and labor we have bought intelligence. 

We have minds like the tusks of those forgotten tigers, 

.            hypertrophied and terrible, 

We have counted the stars and half-understood them, 

             we have watched the farther galaxies fleeing away 

           from us, wild herds 

Of panic horses - or a trick of distance deceived by the prism - 

             we outfly falcons and eagles and meteors, 

Faster than sound, higher than the nourishing air; 

            we have enormous privilege, we do not fear you, 

We have invented the jet-plane and the death-bomb 

            and the cross of Christ - "Oh," he said, "surely 

You'll live forever" - grinning like a skull, covering his mouth 

         with his hand - "What could exterminate you?" 

*

Robinson Jeffers died in 1962 at the age of seventy-five, ending one of the most controversial poetic careers of this century. The son of a theology professor at Western Seminary in Pittsburgh, Jeffers was taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as a boy, and spent three years in Germany and Switzerland before entering the University of Western Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh) at fifteen. His education continued on the West Coast after his parents moved there, and he received a B.A. from Occidental College at eighteen. His interest in forestry, medicine, and general science led him to pursue his studies at the University of Southern California, and the University of Zurich. The poems in this volume have been selected from his major works, among them Be Angry at the Sun; Hungerfield; The Double Axe; Roan Stallion; Tamar and Other Poems; as well as The Beginning and the End, which contains his last poems.