Why the caged bird sings
(Petit-Wasmes Juli 1880 Letter 133)
A bird
In a cage
In the spring
Knows very well that there is some purpose he could pursue. He feels very well that there is something ‘to do’. What is it?
He doesn’t remember it, has vague ideas then and says:
“The others make their nest, bring forth young, and raise them.”
He then bangs his head against the bars of the cage. But the cage stays and the bird is mad with pain.
“Look what an idler.”
Says another bird that flies by.
“That one is some kind of rentier.”
Still the prisoner stays alive, he does not die, nothing shows from the outside of what is going on inside. He’s doing fine, he’s quite happy in the beams of the sun.
But then comes the migration of the birds. Gusts of dejection.
“But”
Say the children.
“He’s got everything he needs?”
He’s staring outside to the sky where a thunderstorm is about to burst. And he feels the up-rise against his fate from deep within.
“I’m in a cage, I’m in a cage,”
“you fools!”
“Therefore I’ve got everything I need.”
“Oh, freedom please, let me be a bird like the others.”
In that way an idle man sometimes looks like an idle bird. And the people are incapable to do something, captured in an I-can’t-tell how horrible, seriously horrible cage.
I know. There is liberation, the late liberation. A reputation that rightly or wrongly has been ruined, the poverty, the concurrence of circumstances, the misfortune, that is what turns people into prisoners.
One can not always tell you what it is that locks you in, walls you in, seems to bury you. But you still feel I don’t know,
What bars
What fences
What walls
Is this all imagination, fantasy? I think it’s not. And you wonder;
My God
Is it for long?
Is it for ever?
Is it for eternity?
You know what makes the prison disappear? It’s very deep and earnest affection. To be friends, to be brothers, to love. That opens the prison with a sovereign power, with a mighty enchantment. But those who don’t have that, stay in death.
There where affection revives, revives life.
