The Pigeon

The Pigeon Dealer

In the far east, pigeon racing is a popular sport with large bets placed on each race, and a good pigeon is valuable. The picture is included to illustrate the poem and reflect the pigeon as a model of life; a simple nature, versus the greed and destructive qualities of the dealer.

I have always tried to shrug off problems, to present a cheerful, coping face to the world. Perhaps it is an attitude of war babies, the "stiff upper lip", the never complain generation. But now, living with a terminal cancer is having some effect on my attitude to life. Normally when asked how I am, I simply replied, "not too bad...", but a couple of times recently I realised I'd suddenly confessed to people who otherwise would not know, "OK, except for the terminal cancer." Perhaps it is the rogue within, wanting to see their expression, or perhaps it is a more vulnerable me, finally facing up to the reality of an inevitable death or seeking a sympathetic response.

This even appeared in a recent dream; I was a young houseman again, doing a ward round with the professor. Although amazed by the range and depth of modern tests, I was still giving a reasonable account of each case based on clinical assessment, as we used to. Then an eighty-two-year-old man was admitted; this was clearly me, although I was still the young doctor admitting him. I gave a single diagnosis just from a glance, even without an examination: "he will have bronchopneumonia. He's over eighty, we don't treat him." 

Waking in the morning, I remembered the vivid dream as I looked out of my window to see a bedraggled pigeon on the roof opposite, leading to this mournful poem. But rest assured, dear reader, I'm not usually in so sombre a mood.

The Pigeon

Astride the ridge across the way
A pigeon squats in mournful grey;
His sheen is dull, his plumage bleak,
No seeds of corn adorn his beak,

While from his wing, like flag forlorn,
A feather hangs, defeat to mourn.
He cannot smooth this hurt away
But pecks it vainly through the day.

He does not strut but slinks along;
No coos provoke his answering song;
No more to soar among his kin
With swoops of joy upon the wing.

Like him, I squat upon my chair,
My features drawn, my lank hair spare,
Those wild conjectures - once to flout -
Now poke my pain with stabs of doubt.

And all I’ve strived and strutted for
Is lost, with hope, to bear no more.
With pain intense the hurt-strikes crack,
Each memory lashed upon my back.

I too can only limp along,
No more to strive with cheery song
But curl into a rueful ball ─
Awaiting death to finish all.

John Herbert Marr