It is not an affront to the kingdom of the birds
an aberration or natural flaw
perpetuated
through mere evolutionary inertia
The art for art's sake of the peacock or pheasant
balances
the buzzard's utility
(Beauty
is in the eye of the beholder
and is only relative)
Seeing it you may lament its lack of symmetry
the dull and rather mournful color
the no less weighty repugnance
of its turkey comb (Even without
the obscene neck you might think of it
as an inedible turkey)
We concede that it is ugly as the devil
(Has anyone ever seen the devil?)
and that it provokes the most pitiless loathing
(It is common to stone buzzards; I've seen children
practicing to be executioners)
But without this regional variant
of the vulture so defamed by rhetoric,
without this "turkey buzzard" or "carrion eater"
- with such names is it insulted -
what would have become
of the accursed regions
visited
by yellow fever
and other plagues
of the tristes tropiques?
Buzzards
were our recycling brigades
And now that buzzards are extinct
garbage is about to engulf the world
José Emilio Pacheco was born in Mexico in 1939. His works include Battles
in the Desert and Other Stories (English version 1987), and City of Memory and
Other Poems (English version 1997). He has also published anthologies, novels and
translations of, among others, Beckett, Holan, Schwoub, and Eliot.
Margaret Sayers Peden has also translated the novels of Laura Esquivel and
Isabel Allende.
through mere evolutionary inertia
