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CRC Analysis on Margo Berdeshevsky’s
Before the Drought
“Birds on the
Precipice”
Before
the Drought is a 99-page-blockbuster of 44 poems about body image, global
warming, spiritual quest, elegies, death, ecstasy, prayer, and a cry out to the
injustice of the world. The poems stand
alone as individual poems and yet link in a pattern creating a rhythm that
stays with the reader long after the last poem is read.
Precipice
is the fitting word to describe what the reader experiences an unprecedented
vulnerability that will force him or her to think outside the box and to think
in worlds they never thought possible.
There are
numerous imagery throughout these poems but the one image that most of the
poems share is that of birds – albatrosses, bats, blackbirds, cardinals, cranes,
crows, doves, egret, frigates, geese, gulls, hawks, herons, ibis, nightingales,
orioles, owls, phoenixes, pigeons, ravens, snake birds, sparrows, and
thrushes. These birds experience a
journey of words by flying in the roads of the skies in the poem.
black frigate’s flight watched
if I was learning – if I knew you
then
know how to listen it was as syllables
of a road I hadn’t pronounced yet
--excerpt from “Blason”
The
symbolism in these poems is not the bird but us, humanity, in the disguise of birds.
In “Whose Sky, Between” the death is in the
form of wars where Berdeshevsky compares the sound of the owl, known for death,
falling on a hard surface to that of gunfire through humanity on a wall.
A name that meant sound of an owl’s
hard fall, another day of blood gunned to all
walls
The crane is a symbol of eternal life
where the bird is able to live in a variety of environments – the land, the
sky, and the sea. In “Whose Sky,
Between” the only living remains of these horrible wars are the cranes.
This day, how many white cranes
remember all the bombs we’ve made to make the ‘other’
dead. Said:
so we may never die. Said: hang a thousand small wings from our
branches.
In the next
to the last couplet there is still hope for life in the form of peace that cannot
be defeated by war.
May one crane fly, one jasmine
open, one thrush sing-all fragile night.
One bloom of
a peace that cannot die.
Mother,
I cry,
you promised kinder dreams. You promised sleep. Be kind, you said, before you
surrendered. Before
you climbed the star-fall. This night won’t last, you said. I’m the heron, I’m the lake at peace, our
vine leads to you, you said.
In “Pulse” the speaker of the poem feels
her value as a human being is decreased as she ages. She finally comes to the point where she begs
her ghost to end her life. Instead the
ghost sends her snow geese, which symbolize new beginnings, falling like rain
from the sky. She then hums a prayer
that her ghost will send her blind people to acknowledge she is alive, but not
see her aged body or the dead geese. The
ghost sends more geese fall to the sky, their dead bodies covering the
street.
Showers of snow geese. The morning sky bled them, no one else noticed
or was bothered . I
Covered my eyes the way I always
had when I passed any accident in the street, so afraid to see
anything dead.
Berdeshevsky
is not known as a political poet but the one poem that sheds light on the
political trauma of our day is “Stopped For Hours.”
It
seems fitting to interpret Lady Justice as the Statue of Liberty since
Berdeshevsky resides in France and the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France
to America. The stage is set – crows
(known as messengers of bad news) are freezing in tall trees and, at the sound
of the winter bell, hiss so loud the Statue of Liberty can hear.
Lady justice.
Splayed.
If you’ve watched, count the days.
If she stands
Count her shame.
If you’ve seen the crumbling
Mountain, if you’ve watched
While she rends her clothing, keening-
Soft pulp, wound in wires of the lies we
Know.
While the phoenix wings
Open – hands- up.
There
are two celebration of life poems both dedicated to legendary poet W. S Merwin
– “Blason” which features a black frigate, bats, a hawk, and orioles; and “Evil
Twin of Blue” which features one red cardinal that Merwin feeds on his mountain
property in Hawaii.
The
poem “In Custody of the Eyes” could be described as a poem to be read on
Easter. Berdeshevsky, who identifies as
a Christian, tells of a blackbird (which could symbolize Jesus) that has been
shot down along with the cutting and shooting of a tree (which symbolizes the
cross).
A branch splattered with
blood buds paused inert as
birds with no wings yet.
(Yesterday, the chair was empty)
(Yesterday, the tomb had a body in it.)
In
“Mornings After” a woman holds a crow and questions everyone - the alchemist,
the translator, the scholar, the dissident, God, the scientist – of why the
horrors of the Holocaust happened? And
why any horror continues to happen in our world?
I am
the woman who asks, after.
Sparrow, eye on a god with no name
for us, what did you
find?
Berdeshevsky read this specific piece and responded via email: “Thank you, Christal, for your insights. As an author, I have a core belief...once written, my poems belong to their readers, no longer mine to interpret or comment on another reader's understanding. They take flight and belong to each reader. So all I must do is thank you for your caring commentary. I would only add this, if I may: In your summation, you write, "Berdeshevsky’s Before the Drought isn’t about finding the answers or solving the problems – but this: to never forget, to never stop questioning, to always remember, to always fight for justice, to always hope, and to always love.” That is a more optimistic take on the book as a whole, perhaps. The book comes in dire times, with a perhaps darker vision. At this juncture, globally, we need one another more than ever before, and, we need to speak out according to our gifts, such as they may be. I will try to be a voice in my time. And that voice says simply this: Before the Drought is a book for the breaths and cries and whispers of our shared now. I am hopeful that it will reach both the minds and hearts of many.”
Steven Asmussen
Margo Berdeshevsky
Carolyn Forché
Glass Lyre Press
Linda E Kim
Linda McCoy
W.S. Merwin
