Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches on the wall,
And waits for breakfast to drop dead,
And never blinks at all,
And rotting in the sun is smelled;
And still must be the form
That interests the hopeful bird
Competing with the worm.
When I am stretched upon the sand,
Discarded old debris,
Then comes that feathered hopeful thing
To scatter crumbs of me.
Blinks, sometimes… but yes, I think the Parsis have it just about right.
Good parody poem—but I’d have been tempted to use “extremity” in the last stanza. Perhaps “It crunches my extremities / And scatters crumbs of me.”
Nice timing for me, when I’ve been going through a minor obsession with vultures. Today, I was watching turkey vultures drifting gracefully above the hills of central New York; but I’d like to link some pictures of Old World vultures in the Spanish Pyrenees, from my favorite nature photography blog:
http://yildelen.blogalia.com/historias/46269
http://yildelen.blogalia.com/historias/39879
http://yildelen.blogalia.com//historias/49301
How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers”. The thing with feathers has turned to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.
Vasha, thanks for sharing the links to that fabulous site! I have friends from that area who will love the photos.
Like Auguste, my first thought about “the thing with feathers” was the Woody Allen line about it…