Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Returning Birds” by Wisława Szymborska, and took a close look at “Paysage Azteeque 1950″ by Rufino Tomayo posted below.

Our prompt was: “Begin your writing with: “Rejoice, O reason…”.”

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Please join us for our next session Wednesday September 23rd at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Credit: Rufino Tomayo, Paysage Azteeque 1950 

Returning Birds
  by Wisława Szymborska

This spring the birds came back again too early.
Rejoice, O reason: instinct can err, too.
It gathers wool, it dozes off — and down they fall
into the snow, into a foolish fate, a death
that doesn’t suit their well-wrought throats and splendid claws,
their honest cartilage and conscientious webbing,
the heart’s sensible sluice, the entrails’ maze,
the nave of ribs, the vertebrae in stunning enfilades,
feathers deserving their own wing in any crafts museum,
the Benedictine patience of the beak.

This is not a dirge — no, it’s only indignation.
An angel made of earthbound protein,
a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs,
singular in air, without number in the hand,
its tissues tied into a common knot
of place and time, as in an Aristotelian drama
unfolding to the wings’ applause,
falls down and lies beside a stone,
which in its own archaic, simpleminded way
sees life as a chain of failed attempts.