BIRD PHOENIX
IN THE GARDEN OF Eden, under the Tree of
Knowledge, stood a hedge of roses. Inside the first rose that
bloomed, a bird was born. Its flight was like light, glorious its
colors and splendid its song.
But when Eve picked the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge, and she and Adam were chased from the Garden of Eden, a
spark fell from the avenging angel’s sword of flame into the nest
and ignited it. The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg a
new bird arose—the only—the always only—bird Phoenix. Legend tells
that it nests in Arabia and that every hundred years it burns
itself up in its nest, and from the red egg a new Phoenix flies,
the only one in the world.
The bird flutters around us, swift as light,
glorious in color and splendid in song. When the mother sits by her
child’s cradle, it’s by the pillow and sweeps a halo around the
child’s head with its wings. It flies through the rooms of
frugality and brings sunshine there, where the simple cupboards
waft with the scent of violets.
But bird Phoenix isn’t just Arabia’s bird. It
flutters in the glow of the northern lights over the icy fields of
Lapland. It leaps amongst the yellow flowers in Greenland’s short
summer. Under the copper mines of Fahlun1 and in
England’s coal mines, it flies like a moth with dust on its wings
over the song book in the pious worker’s hand. It sails on the
lotus leaf by the holy waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the
Hindu girl light up when she sees it.
Bird Phoenix! Don’t you know him? The bird
of paradise, the sacred swan of song. It sat on the Thespian cart
as a gossiping raven and flapped with its soiled black wings. With
a swan’s red sonorous beak it glided over Iceland’s bards. It
rested on Shakespeare’s shoulder as one of Odin’s ravens,2 and
whispered in his ear: Immortality. It flew with the song festival
through the great hall of Wartburg.3
Bird Phoenix! Don’t you know him? He sang
the Marseillaise for you, and you kissed the feathers that
fell from his wings. He came in the glory of paradise, and perhaps
you turned away to the sparrow with gilded wings.
Bird of paradise! Renewed each century, born in
flames and dying in flames. Your picture framed in gold hangs in
the galleries of the rich, while you yourself often fly wildly and
alone—a legend only: Bird Phoenix of Arabia.
In the Garden of Eden when you were born under the
tree of knowledge, in the first blooming rose, God kissed you and
gave you your right name—Poetry.
NOTES
1
Copper-mining town northwest of Stockholm.
2 In
Nordic mythology, Odin has two ravens, Hugin and Munin, who fly
around the world every day and then whisper everything they see and
hear in Odin’s ear.
3
According to legend, Wartburg castle was the site of a minstrels’
contest in 1207 ordered by Count Herman of Thüringen.