FIDELITIES

1 8 Y F I D E L I T I E S J O S E P H H A R R I S O N Whatever piece of code, Hard-wired millennia, dictates they cross The Himalayan chain To reach their distant wintertime abode, Reliving all the strain Of their monumental journey’s struggle and loss, The graceful Demoiselle Crane, Anthropoides virgo, Slender and beautiful, known by its white Ear tufts and long black breast Plume, seems too frail to, year after driven year, go On such an arduous quest, Scaling those glacial summits in its flight, Then crossing back to nest In marshes on the steppes, Where their peculiar courtship rituals Require elaborate Wing-flaps, and bows, and odd, balletic steps, As they communicate In long duets, coordinating calls To single out a mate For life. Fidelity So perfect moved Valmiki (so goes the tale) By the Tamasa Stream, Who saw a loving couple suddenly Divide like a ripped seam Split when a hunter’s arrow felled the male, And heard the female scream 1 9 R In her bewildered grief, And felt his anger surge spontaneously To sharpen to a curse Wishing the killer unrest without relief: The world’s first man-made verse, In a form of metrical dexterity Whole epics would rehearse. Metapoetic birds, The Koonj (from kraunch, like ‘‘crane’’) can represent Feminine loveliness In delicately curved dimensions words Take figures to finesse, Or those whose wanderings of long extent Their journeyings express Through parallel’s conceit, For what exhausted traveler, far from home, Looking for one small source Of strength or hope, would not admire their feat Of pluck and subtle force, Braving the altitudes to overcome The hazards of the course? (Fatigue, hunger, predation Defeat the laboring heart’s heroic rallies Every di≈cult day: In the length of each biannual migration Thousands will drop away.) We know now that they don’t cut through the valleys, But somehow fight their way Right up to clear the top Of ridges as high as 26,000 feet, Riding the thermals so They elevate (it’s death to start to stop) Above sheer ice and snow To hit, head on, the big winds, beat and beat Against the blast, then go 2 0 H A R R I S O N Y Over at last to glide Downward on resting wings, till some prenatal Instinct decides it’s time To turn their faces toward the great divide And, in formation, climb To meet the wind-tormented, often fatal Precincts of the sublime. ...