Max Porter: Grief is the Thing with Feathers

‘You’re welcome. But please remember I am your Ted’s song-legend, Crow of the death-chill, please. The God-eating, trash-licking, word-murdering, carcass-desecrating math-bomb motherfucker, and all that.’

‘He never called you a motherfucker.’

‘Lucky me.’

Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if ever they forgot things about their mother.

There were a lot of equations and transactions in their small family. One boy dreamed he had murdered his mother. He checked it wasn’t true, then he put a valuable silver serving spoon that his father had inherited in the bin. It was missed. He felt better.

One boy lost the treasured lunchbox note from his mother saying ‘good luck’. He cried, alone in his room, then threw a toy car at his father’s framed Coltrane poster. It smashed. He felt better. The father dutifully swept up all the glass and understood.

There were a lot of punishments and anticipations in their small family.

The boys fight.

The cold woke one of them, so he woke the other saying FATHER IS GONE, and the other agreed. Their mother had gone — she had either lain down in the snow and slept to death or been taken by wolves — so they knew a thing or two about how a small house smells and sounds when a parent is gone, and they were right, their father was gone.

Perhaps, said one of the boys, he’ll come back, and the other boy ruffled his hair and smiled with his eyes, because no, he wouldn’t come back. A gone dad is a gone dad ever.

So they sang the tidy up song as they went about the place, putting things away, and they put on all their clothes so they looked much fatter than they were, and off they went.

They walked for three days, sleeping only as they rolled down hills, so they were never still. They lost their childish bodies and grew beards and popped through layers of clothing so that by the fourth day, when the sun came out, they were big naked men.

Look at you, said one to the other. Look at our willies, said the other to his brother.

They came upon a little cottage and they knocked at the door. As soon as the terribly beautiful woman answered they knew they weren’t ready for her to be anything other than a mother, so they scurried home, wee wee wee, up the hills, across the frozen woodland, into the house, up the stairs, into bed — eyes squeezed shut — and when they woke up their father was cooking breakfast.

We went to a Birds of Prey Flying Display. In a field. Deep country somewhere, with half a dozen old dears and the plump ginger guide with a radio mic; ‘here she comes, the star of the show.’

The first bird out was a bald eagle, stunning, massive, with a six-foot wingspan. Ooh, yeah, we said. Ooh yeah. The boys were transfixed.

‘Now look as she decides whether or not to turn on the OW-WOOP, THERE SHE GOES, lift, lift, UP SHE GO GIRL, that’s MY GIRL!’

And she soared. She got lift . We got lift.

The boys were gripping the plastic seats and the situational artifice of the captive bird performing dropped away and I was just excited by the bald eagle. The physical magnificence of the eagle.

‘Oh, now here you are, who’s this? Oh, lordy lordy, you tasty little bugger, excuse my language folks. It being springtime the carrion crow in this field here is protecting eggs, as well you would with a bloody eagle about, HOW ABOUT THAT! That, ladies and gentlemen, is a brave little bastard. That is a crow, SURFIN’ A BALD EAGLE!’

I turned sideways and the boys were spontaneously holding hands.

‘Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the bloody miracle of nature. That is two birds basically giving each other a bloody great nod of respect. You may be many bloody kilograms heavier than me, about forty times my size, but if you come near my eggs I’ll bloody show you a thing or two about flying!’

Up we shot, all three of us. A standing ovation. ‘GO CROW!’ we yelled.

‘Why ever not,’ said the red-faced lover of birds, our dude, our guide, ‘why ever fucken not. GO CROW!’

Go crow. Go Crow.

And that was probably the best day of my life since she died.

Once upon a time there was a king who had two sons. The queen had fallen from the attic door and bashed her skull and because the servants in the kingdom were busy polishing sculptures for the king, she bled to death. The king was often busy with futile curse-lifting and the prevention of small wars. And so it was that the little princes would fight.

They slapped. A little cuff, a little jab. The short fat younger prince (called Ivan the Lazy, or Guilty Beast, or Greedy Wolf) would move the chair and send his brother tumbling to the cold marble floor. Trips, shin-kicks, tickles.

Then, as they missed their mother, more and less, the fights got better, worse. The handsome one (called Prince In-a-Bit, or Idle Eagle, or Hungry Deer) would kneel on his brother on the fleshy underarms, and roll his knees upon the slipping muscle. They would lie at opposite ends of the throne-room benches and kick kick kick kick kick until his sobbing brother pleaded mercy, harder.

Then they bit. Then they tried to drown each other. Then they tried to burn each other’s hair. They tied each other up, they twisted wrists, they wedgied, they spat.

Then they found a poison book and took turns to make each other sick. Then they hanged each other. Then they flayed each other. Then they crucified each other. Then they drove rusty nails into each other’s skulls.

One day the king, who happened to be strolling through the palace maze, chanced upon his bloodied sons armed with crossbows, each prince ablaze with murderous intent.

‘My little yearlings, my lovely hoyden boys, why do you play this way?’ asked the king.

‘Because we miss our mammy so,’ the little boys sang in unison.

The king roared with laughter and patted his pig-tight belly.

‘My darling imps, you’ve got so much to learn about what it means to be king. The queen was no more your mother than she was my own. God only knows which corridor wenches spat you two out, but it certainly wasn’t that friend-of-a-friend I called Queen.’

So the boys, quite relieved, shook hands and went on to become very successful kings of large and profitable kingdoms.

Krickle krackle, hop sniff and tackle, in with the bins, singing the hymns.

I lost a wife once, and once is as many times as a crow can lose a wife. Ooh, stab it. Just remembered something.

He flew a genuflection Tintagel — Carlyle cross Morecambe — Orford, wonky, trying to poison himself with forbidden berries and pretty churches, but England’s litter saved him. Ley lines flung him cross-country with no time for grief, power cables catapulted loose bouquets of tar-black bone and feather and other crows rained down from the sky, a dead crow storm, a tor top burnt bird bath, but our crow picked and nibbled at Lilt cans and salted Durex and B&H, and the fire storm passed over his head, as written history over the worker. Blackberry, redcurrant, loganberry, sloe. Damson, plum-pear, crab-apple, bruises. Clots, phlegm, tumours and quince.

He looks in a puddle of oil and sees his beak is brightly coloured, striped red, green, purple and orange. Like a fucking puffin.

He opens his mouth to scream and beautiful English melody comes out, garden-song, like a blackbird or Ivor blooming Gurney.

This is another one of Crow’s bad dreams.

Once upon a time our Dad took the bus to Oxford to hear his hero Ted Hughes speak. This was when Ted Hughes was grey and nearly dead and Dad was just out of school. He’d never been to Oxford before and he was shocked that there were normal shops, McDonald’s and stuff. He couldn’t believe there were yobs throwing cans in the bus station. He thought there would only be professors mulling things over.