Birds Are the Liveliest Fruit of Trees

Recently my Portuguese pal Paulo Dias Figueiredo introduced me to the work of Ruy Belo, a poet who Paulo claims is second only in 20th century Portuguese stature to the poet Fernando Pessoa (and I realize that I haven’t yet posted anything about Pessoa–I will soon). After reading a clutch of poems by Belo, translated by Richard Zenith at Poetry International Web, I have to agree.

The following poem reminds me of when I lived in the small village of Kosangbé in the Ivory Coast and mentioned once to a friend, San Kofi, as we were passing a batch of birds making a racket in a nearby tree, that those birds could really sing. Kofi shot me quite the startled look, and said “Birds don’t sing, they weep.” I had nothing to say in reply, still swept up in the thought that what I heard as joy, Kofi’s culture heard as sorrow.

That exchange stayed with me, and led me to the understanding that birds don’t sing or weep unless we say they do. And, apparently, birds are the liveliest fruit of a tree, because Ruy Belo says they are.

A FEW PROPOSITIONS WITH BIRDS AND TREES THAT
THE POET CONCLUDES WITH A REFERENCE TO THE HEART

RUY BELO

Birds are born on the tips of trees
The trees I see yield birds instead of fruit
Birds are the liveliest fruit of trees
Birds begin where trees end
Birds make the trees sing
On reaching the height of birds the trees swell and stir
passing from the vegetable to the animal kingdom
Like birds their leaves alight on the ground
when autumn quietly falls over the fields
I feel like saying that birds emanate from the trees
but I’ll leave that manner of speaking to the novelist
it’s complicated and doesn’t work in poetry
it still hasn’t been isolated from philosophy
I love trees especially those that yield birds
Who hangs them there on the branches?
Whose hand is it whose myriad hand?
I pass by and my heart’s not the same

Artist image: Birds and Trees, by Fred Tomaselli.

2 Comments

Zedque says:

April 13, 2010 at 4:46 am

What an amazing poem, and so appropriate to read just as the swallows are returning to the skies of Lisbon. Thank you for posting!
Lily says:

April 18, 2010 at 10:14 am

Oh that is beautiful! Do you have it in Portuguese as well? I’d love to read it in the original language.

Birds Are the Liveliest Fruit of Trees

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