{"id":5027,"date":"2013-02-11T10:09:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T15:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=5027"},"modified":"2015-07-24T17:16:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T21:16:36","slug":"getting-personal-too-being-kept-by-a-jackdaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2013\/02\/getting-personal-too-being-kept-by-a-jackdaw.html","title":{"rendered":"Getting Personal, Too: &#8216;Being Kept by a Jackdaw&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My staff of thousands tells me that if I post any more poems by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/12\/who-is-heathcote-williams.html\">Heathcote Williams<\/a>, I will be making a mockery of this blog&#8217;s stated purpose. I&#8217;m a small &#8220;d&#8221; democrat who rules Straight Up by popular consent, so I had to admit I&#8217;ve been banging on about his poems. But &#8212; with a capital &#8220;B&#8221; &#8212; what are his poems if not &#8220;arts, media &#038; cultural news with &#8216;tude?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>More than mere &#8216;tude, they&#8217;re truth-telling CAT scans of historic figures and cultural history (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/12\/shelley-at-oxford-a-timely-poem-for-christmas.html\">&#8220;Shelley at Oxford,&#8221;<\/a> for example, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/12\/more-dissident-literature-from-cold-turkey-press.html\">&#8220;The United States of Porn&#8221;<\/a>); of political and moral issues (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/11\/the-lord-of-the-drones-and-the-white-house-fly.html\">&#8220;The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly&#8221;<\/a>); of environmental matters (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2012\/12\/heathcote-williams-on-the-real-american-president.html\">&#8220;The American President Is Really a Tree&#8221;<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2013\/01\/selling-the-earth-no-return-no-exchange.html\">&#8220;Selling the Earth&#8221;<\/a>); of war and pacificism (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2013\/01\/harry-patch-anti-war-hero.html\">&#8220;Harry Patch: Anti-War Hero&#8221;<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_5033\" style=\"width: 110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yFlWh5LE-BY\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5033\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/jackdaw207e-e1360525835644.jpg\" alt title=\"Click for video.\"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yFlWh5LE-BY\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-5033\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><BR>Click for video.<\/a><\/p><\/div> But that is not all his poems are. Some of them are deeply personal, telling private stories about himself. This one, for example. I first read it in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huxleyscientific.com\/books\/forbidden-fruit\/\"><em>FORBIDDEN FRUIT: Meditations on Science, Technology, and Natural History,<\/em><\/a> published by the Oxford-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huxleyscientific.com\/\">Huxley Scientific Press<\/a> in the U.K.<\/p>\n<p>Read (below) and enjoy. If you prefer to watch and listen, click the video. It is narrated beautifully by Alan Cox, with his own montage.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yFlWh5LE-BY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><font size=3>BEING KEPT BY A JACKDAW<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At a country fair a couple called Dave and Di Nelstrop<br \/>\nCame from Bow, in Devon, to sell tansy pancakes &#8212;<br \/>\nBringing skillets, a brazier, a mound of flour and eggs,<br \/>\nThey drew customers to their tent by the good smell.<\/p>\n<p>Behind a striped awning there was a stack of wooden cages<br \/>\nWhich they&#8217;d carried with them, each with an injured bird.<br \/>\nOne was a large crow, a raven, they referred to as Aubrey;<br \/>\nHis door was left open and he caught me in his glare.<\/p>\n<p>Between bites washed down with a blue mug of sweet tea<br \/>\nI began confessing to something I&#8217;d always yearned for.<br \/>\n&#8220;Ever since childhood . . .&#8221; They looked patiently quizzical.<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;ve wanted . . .&#8221; I paused again, transfixed by the crow &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Hopping on black legs, scanning me with a needle eye,<br \/>\nBlack as those Victorian jet stones from Whitby,<br \/>\nHe&#8217;d expose a scarlet throat and then he&#8217;d caw in my face<br \/>\nWith a sound as old as Egypt that said, &#8220;I know you &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve pecked your ancestors&#8217; bones and nibbled your DNA<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;ll penetrate your soul with my carrion cries.&#8221;<br \/>\nAubrey&#8217;s eerie presence triggered an old boyhood dream<br \/>\nOf having a jackdaw on your shoulder, like a pirate.<\/p>\n<p>Whispering secrets in your ear, this jackdaw would speak<br \/>\nIn a language that only you could understand<br \/>\nYou and the jackdaw. You and this bird. A medieval bond<br \/>\nLike young Arthur&#8217;s falcon trained by Merlin.<\/p>\n<p>Only a jackdaw would be much more worldly wise,<br \/>\nIndependent, and even faintly criminal.<br \/>\nLifting jewels from open windows if you were broke;<br \/>\nTeaching you things no one else knew.<\/p>\n<p>As I watched Aubrey retire to his cage, demanding food<br \/>\nAnd a cloth draped on top so he could sleep,<br \/>\nDusk settled and Aubrey fell silent; then I blurted out,<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;ve always wanted to look after a jackdaw.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dave Nelstrop said casually, &#8220;Oh, we&#8217;ve got one.<br \/>\nA fledgling. It was too poorly to bring.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s being fed by a dripper. With touches of brandy.<br \/>\nIt just fell out of its nest in a bell-tower.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They promised to bring it when next they were passing.<br \/>\n&#8220;Does it have a name?&#8221; I asked when they arrived.<br \/>\n&#8220;Could call it Jack,&#8221; Dave suggested. &#8220;Surname of Daw.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe grinned. &#8220;Until something else better occurs.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;Jack Daw&#8221; seemed workman-like and so it stuck.<br \/>\nThen I stared, bewildered by this quaint creature:<br \/>\nOnce childishly romanticized, it was radically different<br \/>\nFrom the parrot on Long John Silver&#8217;s tricorn hat.<\/p>\n<p>At close quarters its feral behaviour was dominated<br \/>\nBy a consuming curiosity, but who was it exactly?<br \/>\nThis bird that had lived its life in a tower, then fallen,<br \/>\nAnd whose cowl made it look like a hooded monk.<\/p>\n<p>It would wake at dawn and shadow me till dusk.<br \/>\nWe&#8217;d find mealworms, then warm up some milk.<br \/>\nThe one fact it knew was that in order to survive<br \/>\nI&#8217;d have to be converted into a servile minion.<\/p>\n<p>So Jack behaved like some tyrannical movie star,<br \/>\nDemanding full attention day and night<br \/>\nWith a vampire&#8217;s knack of spotting the submissive,<br \/>\nThe getting them to run endless errands.<\/p>\n<p>Almost immediately I became the bird&#8217;s captive,<br \/>\nExisting solely to attend to its needs,<br \/>\nWondering if I&#8217;d experience Stockholm Syndrome,<br \/>\nWhich means you fall in love with your captors.<\/p>\n<p>But this bonsai pterodactyl was quite hard to love &#8212;<br \/>\nA dive-bombing comet of energy and appetite.<br \/>\nAt daybreak its beak was pushed between my lips,<br \/>\nSearching for a morsel from last night&#8217;s meal.<\/p>\n<p>A bony road-drill picking at your teeth was how Jack<br \/>\nAlerted you to the unpalatable fact<br \/>\nThat instead of being an independent human being<br \/>\nYou were now mobile carrion ruled by a bird.<\/p>\n<p>My body clock was retuned to jackdaw hours:<br \/>\nTo wake at dawn, then to feel tired at dusk.<br \/>\nIt was unsettling to fall asleep as soon as it got dark<br \/>\nAnd realize how electricity had made you a moth.<\/p>\n<p>Yet there were long days of elation: digging up a patch<br \/>\nWith a jackdaw perched on your head;<br \/>\nKeeping watch from its new tower and swooping down<br \/>\nTo display its skills as a metal detector.<\/p>\n<p>Burried bottle tops would be brought to the surface,<br \/>\nAlong with fragments of bright silver foil,<br \/>\nInvoking the ghosts of picnics past, then sixpences<br \/>\nWere teased out and offered as treasure trove.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s trading you level,&#8221; an old countryman said,<br \/>\nStopping by to watch such transactions.<br \/>\n&#8220;You give him food and shelter. He gives you coin.<br \/>\nWhat you&#8217;d call satisfaction all round.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When the philosopher Thoreau was hoeing his garden<br \/>\nA young sparrow alighted on his shoulder;<br \/>\nThoreau said he felt &#8220;more distinguished by that event<br \/>\nThan by an epaulet.&#8221; I knew what he meant.<\/p>\n<p>Another visitor, Bernie Skuse, a poacher from Bristol,<br \/>\nSaid, &#8220;Tell you what we used to do, boy.<br \/>\nSharpen the edge of a coin and set it under his tongue.<br \/>\nCut through the tendons, then he&#8217;ll talk.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I thanked Bernie but said I wasn&#8217;t sure that I wanted<br \/>\nTo torture Jack into speaking my language &#8212;<br \/>\nI guessed he&#8217;d just tell me what I&#8217;d taught him to say,<br \/>\nAnd I imagined he had thoughts of his own.<\/p>\n<p>Bird-like thoughts. From a miniature mind, aeons old,<br \/>\nThat had evolved feathers and grown them from skin.<br \/>\nInitially earthbound, it had had Icarus&#8217; dream of flying,<br \/>\nFlinging itself higher and higher till it stayed aloft.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d now also dream nightly I had wings on my shoulders,<br \/>\nI steered with the feathers sprouting from my heels.<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;d wonder, since I woke feeling a firm ally of this elf,<br \/>\nIf he could have been the projectionist of such flights.<\/p>\n<p>Then gradually I suspected that he was preparing to go.<br \/>\nBeing mended, the fierce bond that he&#8217;d made<br \/>\nFirst with the Nelstrops, his rescuers, and later with myself<br \/>\nWas now weakening at the sight of other birds.<\/p>\n<p>Each evening there were flocks of rooks and jackdaws<br \/>\nPassing overhead on their way to the estuary.<br \/>\nJack looked up at them and gave a quietly uncertain cry<br \/>\nBelonging neither to one world nor the other.<\/p>\n<p>Each day was spent on my shoulder and each day<br \/>\nHe&#8217;d fly off, and would always come back &#8212;<br \/>\nHe flew in circles but they&#8217;d increase in diameter<br \/>\nAs the time would come for him never to return.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d look up at the sky, studying tree after tree,<br \/>\nAnd ask people if they&#8217;d seen a jackdaw.<br \/>\n&#8220;Pinch something of yours? That&#8217;s what they do.&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd I would realize that in a way he had.<\/p>\n<p>When seeing a clattering of jackdaws &#8212; the collective noun<br \/>\nFor these gregarious birds that pair-bond for life &#8212;<br \/>\nI&#8217;d be more alerted by their gatherings than by anything else:<br \/>\nThe jackdaw tribe&#8217;s peripatetic parliaments.<\/p>\n<p>Spread across the fields, seething carpets of glistening flecks &#8212;<br \/>\nI&#8217;d scrutinize each jackdaw in turn.<br \/>\nWatch them scavenging a sheep&#8217;s carcass on the hillside<br \/>\nHoping to jog one avian memory.<\/p>\n<p>A judgemental friend said, &#8220;You shouldn&#8217;t have tamed it.<br \/>\nYou&#8217;ve put its life in peril. I heard of someone<br \/>\nTook a bird in, then, when they released it, it was so tame<br \/>\nIt landed on the barrel of a sportsman&#8217;s gun.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Got itself blown to bits, didn&#8217;t it?&#8221; I became troubled.<br \/>\nI hadn&#8217;t tamed it, but undeterred they finished off<br \/>\nTheir unsolicited obituary with, &#8220;Just a bird, wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221;<br \/>\nI then buried myself in folklore, it being less brutal.<\/p>\n<p>To country science nothing&#8217;s &#8220;just a bird&#8221; but can foretell rain<br \/>\nOr death, when jackdaws nest in a chimney.<br \/>\nA jackdaw can signify a birth whenever seen on the rooftop;<br \/>\nEach movement in nature is meant to be read.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog&#8221;<br \/>\nContains all the letters of the alphabet,<br \/>\nAs does &#8220;Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz,&#8221;<br \/>\nYet no arrangement of the letters solves the riddle &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>The riddle that I was left with, far harder to resolve<br \/>\nThan the age-old riddle of the Sphinx:<br \/>\n&#8220;What goes on four legs in the morning, two at noon,<br \/>\nAnd on three legs at evening time?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The answer being man himself, who crawls first on four,<br \/>\nThen stands on two, then on three counting his stick &#8212;<br \/>\nBut the impossible riddle the jackdaw has posed was why<br \/>\nMan has determined to end his life with no legs at all.<\/p>\n<p>Yet while civilization proves to be of questionable value<br \/>\nIn helping him to find his niche in the universe,<br \/>\nA jackdaw can behave as if completely assured of its place<br \/>\nAnd with a comic beauty that&#8217;s close to perfection.<\/p>\n<p>Someone told me that Hermann, Kafka&#8217;s father, had a sign<br \/>\nIn front of the family&#8217;s fancy goods shop in Prague.<br \/>\nIt was a painting of a jackdaw set above their trade name &#8212;<br \/>\nFor <em>kavka<\/em> means &#8220;jackdaw&#8221; in Czech.<\/p>\n<p>I discovered Kafka had always identified with his namesake:<br \/>\nHe described a jackdaw kept by the coal merchant<br \/>\nNear Tein Cathedral as &#8220;my relative,&#8221; saying he sympathized<br \/>\nWith its longing &#8220;to disappear between the stones.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kafka told the young poet Gustav Janouch,<br \/>\n&#8220;We find relations with animals easier than with men.&#8221;<br \/>\nAdding that, &#8220;Animals are closer to us than human beings.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe coal merchant&#8217;s jackdaw struck a chord.<\/p>\n<p>Unspurprisingly &#8212; for birds are the uncredited inventors<br \/>\nOf music, and all of them continue singing for joy:<br \/>\nCost-free, unlike man&#8217;s derivative warbling for profit.<br \/>\n&#8220;I hope you love birds too?&#8221; Emily Dickinson asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is economical. It saves going to heaven.&#8221; I do. It is. It does.<br \/>\nI still see that questing figure; I pick up his cries.<br \/>\nThe <em>tchack tchack,<\/em> eight times. And the eyes, the pale blue iris<br \/>\nAnd the intense pupils studying things miles away.<\/p>\n<p>Jack Daw. A foot long. Black, shot with steel blue. Grey nape.<br \/>\nDemonically sprightly. Bustling and strutting.<br \/>\nJerkily swaggering, then pausing to shuffle along the ground<br \/>\nAs he turns everything over, clods and stones &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Searching for something reflective to present with a flourish<br \/>\nWhile ripping up rival possessions, like books, into shreds.<br \/>\n&#8220;Anyone,&#8221; Kafka said, &#8220;who keeps the ability to see beauty<br \/>\nNever grows old.&#8221; A jackdaw&#8217;s hop puts a skip in my step.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_5226\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/HW-and-Jack-Daw-300.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5226\" data-attachment-id=\"5226\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2013\/02\/getting-personal-too-being-kept-by-a-jackdaw.html\/hw-and-jack-daw-300\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/HW-and-Jack-Daw-300.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"300,168\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"HW and Jack Daw (300)\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt; Jack Daw and the Poet. [Photo: Jacquetta Eliot]&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt; Jack Daw and the Poet. [Photo: Jacquetta Eliot]&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/HW-and-Jack-Daw-300.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/HW-and-Jack-Daw-300.jpg\" alt=\" Jack Daw and the Poet [Photo: Jacquetta Eliot]\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5226\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5226\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><BR> Jack Daw and the Poet. [Photo: Jacquetta Eliot]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My staff of thousands tells me that if I post any more poems by Heathcote Williams, I will be making a mockery of this blog&#8217;s stated purpose. I&#8217;m a small &#8220;d&#8221; democrat who rules Straight Up by popular consent, so I had to admit I&#8217;ve been banging on about his poems. But &#8212; with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-literature","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-1j5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5027"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16921,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027\/revisions\/16921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}