Listen to the Mockingbird
There is nothing mawkish about the Mockingbird. Though he mimics many dialects (Mimus polyglottus) he is sincere in what he has to say if less than sane (logikos). For he has no fear of me, or of the dog next door, or even the cat who lurks beside the backyard fence and watches while he balances, half on, half off the deck chair as he sings of things I know not of, such as what he sees from the tops of the trees (ti omorfos thea!).
Every day he visits. Only berries and insects need fear him. True (alithinos), his wife will lay her eggs in some other bird’s nest and leave them there. Consider them guests, travelers on the way who impart as much as they take. And what a symphony their children make! Would you have it any other way? (Ochi). No.
The Mockingbird is like a sponge. All things are his Muse (Mousa), and every bird that ever sang he borrows from. No mother, no father taught him their trills, these burrs and churrs and lilting words. That synthesis is all his own. And he sings at dawn and he sings at dusk and throughout the day, sometimes only muttering to himself as if to say “And so forth, and so on (kathexis).” Thus begs the question: What’s in a word (morfima)? Do we need to know each and every particle of speech to understand him? (Siga-siga) little by little I think I do. I’ve come to believe that his idea (idea) of happiness or even bliss is not dissimilar from our own - except - that he leads a simplified life and likes it (oti, tha ithela).
Not everyone appreciates the Mockingbird. He has his detractors. Sometimes a mourning dove or a cardinal will come to join the chorodia (chorus), captured by his many voices only to dismiss as gibberish the Sophia (Wisdom) that he offers. To them this caution: Not so glib. For if Babel is a parable then Mockingbird has writ its opposite. His ramblings point to a greater truth, we all live under just one roof and when it comes to laughter, pleasure, pain we speak the same language, omoglossos, all of us. And if what he has to tell us seems foreign as Ellinikos, the language of the Greeks, perhaps like him we should learn to speak at least one of the Mother Tongues which ours comes from.
© 2009 Mark Seth Lender
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