Papillon bleu - the blue butterfly

Papillon bleu I

Papillon bleu II

Papillon bleu

Nothing has been broken
though one of the links of the chain
is a blue butterfly

Leonard Cohen

We sometimes encounter
beings who seem to us
impossible.

They don’t seem to be made
to inhabit such a world as ours.
They seem theoretical, hypothetical,
fictional maybe.

We expect to encounter them in a book,
as a metaphor, an image.

We expect them in a poem.
We see them as poem.

Butterflies are such beings.
The sheer size of the wings attached, god knows how,
to the miniature thorax. What kind of muscles are those.
And they fly. Thousands of miles.

*

I have heard of a well intentioned teacher who wanted to show the miracle of nature
to her students. She got a chrysalis, put it in a jar, poked holes is the lid
to make sure it would breathe.

The students watched, wide eyed, as the chrysalis became a butterfly,
attempted to spread its wings.
But there was not enough room in the jar
for one so fragile

and the wings stuck together.

It was then freed to go into the wild, unable to fly –

A victim of its fragile beauty.

*

Once on a phsyc ward, I heard a woman tell someone else:
“you are like me, you are a blue butterfly. Do you know how I know this?
It’s because like me, you have thin long legs”.

Thin, long legs.

*

We see them downtown, those butterflies with stuck wings.
They are not very good runners on their
thin, long legs.

They can no longer fly.

You see them straining their thorax,
trying to spread the crippled wings. Their chests
hurt from the effort, they can no longer breathe so well.

Sometimes they seem to crawl, passing as shadows in back alleys.

They walk along the walls, pacing their jail.

They are still astonished at being so unable to take to the sky.
It would feel so natural to them. They look at the sky as you look at your home.
They don’t understand why the most efficient of walls
is the invisible one.

Many of them stop looking up.
They prefer to look at their feet stuck to the pavement.
They bend their back in order not to see
the painful sky anymore.

They look like they are carrying a dead weight.

The weight of their dead wings.

Victims of their fragile beauty.

They are terrified. Who would not be?
Every one looks like a predator. A child… you.

They look at this seemingly innocent child.
They see the child who, innocently, pulled wings from butterflies, or the child
who caught one and pinned it to the wall.
That was yesterday?

A victim of its fragile beauty…

*

We take these staggering prey
for birds of prey.

They take our children – those easy prey –
for birds of prey.

They dream of thousand mile migrations.

They dream of being part of a cluster on some Mexican fir tree.
Of belonging. With wings on.

*

This is no country for weak men. The young
In one another’s arms…

*

You see the young on street corners, piled onto each other.
They often have a few dogs piled among them.
They cluster.
They dream
of Mexican fir trees.

*

I have heard that the monarch butterfly tastes bad.
It developed this bad taste to ward off predators.

You see them downtown, they developed a bad taste.
They are in bad taste.

We try so often to clean our streets of them. We build highways,
we move out,
we look away.

We sweep them, brush them aside.
We complain about their look, their smell.

We dream of cities clean
without those half butterflies cluttering, clustering.

We sweep the broken wings,
the thin, long legs,
The impossible thoraxes –

Victims of their fragile beauty…

*

And then there’s you.

You managed to spread your wings tentatively.
You cling to a twig,
you try to stay still,
to dazzle the surrounding evil with your beauty,
but your thin, long legs are no match for those gigantic wings:
the slightest breeze carries you away.

You struggle against this invisible enemy.
Your thorax is strained against your wings.
You fly, you flutter

north and south
east and west –
you aim for those Mexican fir trees.

But those winds,
those wings have a will of their own.

You are carried away

victim of your fragile beauty…


A thrust at any link
might have brought him down
but each of you aimed at the blue butterfly