The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don’t mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fine because even in heaven they don’t sing all the time The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t mind some people dying all the time or maybe only starving some of the time which isn’t half so bad if it isn’t you Oh the world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don’t much mind a few dead minds in the higher places or a bomb or two now and then in your upturned faces or such other improprieties as our Name Brand society is prey to with its men of distinction and its men of extinction and its priests and other patrolmen and its various segregations and congressional investigations and other constipations that our fool flesh is heir to Yes the world is the best place of all for a lot of such things as making the fun scene and making the love scene and making the sad scene and singing low songs of having inspirations and walking around looking at everything and smelling flowers and goosing statues and even thinking and kissing people and making babies and wearing pants and waving hats and dancing and going swimming in rivers on picnics in the middle of the summer and just generally ‘living it up’ Yes but then right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright ©1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
1.
If you run for too long, you forget everything.
Even your limbs become invention. A fallacy of skin
you tell yourself you once had when you knew
how to be more, so birds are the stories you now tell
your flesh. You remind her of the Swift
who flies for years, as if land is an impossible trick. You tell
her about the Sea Eagle from China lost
in America for years. Flying and flying and never
finding home. You remember her the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō,
the Olomaʻo, the Kākāwahie, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu
the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane, the Poʻo-uli,
the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui, the birds, the birds,
the birds. You remember her all the birds
who had to be more
to be.
2.
This morning I am unsure how
a bird exists when she has been seen only
under glass for more than fifty years. Her feathers
a feeble reminder of what she could be. Diminished
to a hush of keratin and collagen. This bird
once shook the forest with her color.
3.
This morning I am not sure how
I am still here. Daybreak—
just another process of shedding
of peeling back to meat
with no new skin to shelter.
Every breath, a surprise.
The heart beats still.
But how—how do we quiet
these too loud bones
when our seams are worn
by so much running?
4.
When you finally stop
you still feel your insides running.
Those involuntary tissues scrambling
to burst through your surfaces. What
would you do to let them free? When all of you
is full of run, you imagine yourself feathers.
There is a bird inside you pushing
at all your cracks. The punctures of vanes
are just more places for you to breathe.
This bird inside you would know
how to draw breath. This bird inside you
would know the song struggling
in your throat. What will you do
to let this bird free? What will you do
to find all the songs
you should sing?
5.
Today we remember the Kākāwahie.
we remember the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō,
the Olomaʻo, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu
the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane,
the Poʻo-uli, the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui.
Today we remember our body
before we severed our own wings
just so we could hide
from the man
in the story
who would pin
all our wings
to the ground.
Copyright © 2024 by Lyz Soto. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 27, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.