The road took me to the Zoo entrance […]
When I took some grapes out of a bag one of the ravens opened its wings and the whole outspread blackness of the bird suddenly appeared in front of me. Standing on well-worn and polished black feet, it folded its wings and stuck its bill through the chain-link mesh of the cage. It was a large black bill of clerical aspect, the upper mandible hooked over the lower with a long curving point that was like a fingernail that needed trimming. A little yellow sign on the cage showed the silhouette of a hand with a large piece bitten out, so I sidled away from the raven and dropped a grape through the wire mesh […]
How’s it going? I said to it, not speaking aloud but with my mind.
Well, you know, said the raven, also not speaking aloud, there’s not a lot happening here. […]
How can you live without flying? I said to the raven. How do you get through the days? How do you not go crazy?
The raven looked at me for a while, the little round eye-mirror blinked like a camera shutter. Lots of people live without flying, it said.
But you used to have the whole sky to move around in.
Wait a minute, said the raven.
What?
How do I know I’m not talking to myself? Maybe I’m just imagining this conversation.
I’ve been thinking that very same thought, I said. Tell me what to do to show that I’m receiving you.
Hold out your arms and flap them up and down.
I held out my arms and flapped them up and down.
‘What’s that man doing?’ said a passing child to its mother.
‘Perhaps he’s trying to get above himself,’ she said.
I’ve given you a sign, I said to the raven. How about you? Walk in a circle round your bath if it’s really you speaking to me.
With its old-man walk the raven slowly walked around the bath. Then it came back to where I stood. You were saying, it said. Its voice in my mind had changed: it was all around me in vast and reverberant diapason, as if rebounding from the face of a black escarpment that ringed the horizon under a grey and primordial sky.
It was a giant voice of supernatural power, and a thrill of fear went through me as the raven grew before my eyes. The cage and the zoo seemed to have faded away; the raven loomed over me […]
How could I ever have been such a fool as to speak to it as if I were its equal?
The road took me to the Zoo entrance […]
When I took some grapes out of a bag one of the ravens opened its wings and the whole outspread blackness of the bird suddenly appeared in front of me. Standing on well-worn and polished black feet, it folded its wings and stuck its bill through the chain-link mesh of the cage. It was a large black bill of clerical aspect, the upper mandible hooked over the lower with a long curving point that was like a fingernail that needed trimming. A little yellow sign on the cage showed the silhouette of a hand with a large piece bitten out, so I sidled away from the raven and dropped a grape through the wire mesh […]
How’s it going? I said to it, not speaking aloud but with my mind.
Well, you know, said the raven, also not speaking aloud, there’s not a lot happening here. […]
How can you live without flying? I said to the raven. How do you get through the days? How do you not go crazy?
The raven looked at me for a while, the little round eye-mirror blinked like a camera shutter. Lots of people live without flying, it said.
But you used to have the whole sky to move around in.
Wait a minute, said the raven.
What?
How do I know I’m not talking to myself? Maybe I’m just imagining this conversation.
I’ve been thinking that very same thought, I said. Tell me what to do to show that I’m receiving you.
Hold out your arms and flap them up and down.
I held out my arms and flapped them up and down.
‘What’s that man doing?’ said a passing child to its mother.
‘Perhaps he’s trying to get above himself,’ she said.
I’ve given you a sign, I said to the raven. How about you? Walk in a circle round your bath if it’s really you speaking to me.
With its old-man walk the raven slowly walked around the bath. Then it came back to where I stood. You were saying, it said. Its voice in my mind had changed: it was all around me in vast and reverberant diapason, as if rebounding from the face of a black escarpment that ringed the horizon under a grey and primordial sky.
It was a giant voice of supernatural power, and a thrill of fear went through me as the raven grew before my eyes. The cage and the zoo seemed to have faded away; the raven loomed over me […]
How could I ever have been such a fool as to speak to it as if I were its equal?