Blackbirds and Mice

by Brett Rutherford

When they were grown and old
it seemed a dream to them,
or an oft-repeated
fairy-tale, so real, so
many times retold it seemed
as though they lived it through.

All dressed in dun color,
children, drilled in stillness
by the elders’ warnings —
be quiet as mice, swift
as the flying bird a-light.
Speak not a word, or wolves
might catch and eat you up!

The game they played was called
“Blackbirds and Mice.” Each would
repeat those syllables
at night like a bed-time prayer,
a mantra in the dentist’s chair,
until they no longer remembered
what language they said it in.

Huddled in straw in a hay-truck,
they rode without a cry
or whimper. The game was,
once they were led on out
to a small and dark opening
squared in by timbers,
the game was: you are mice.

Each mouse-child was given
a tiny crust of bread.
The tall figure ahead of you
is the Mouse-King himself.
His light will go on before you.
Follow it until you come
to the mouse-hole’s exit.
Eat breadcrumbs along the way
and say to yourselves,
We are mice … just tiny mice.
Bread-crumbs we nibble
as quietly we march.
It may be dark around.
Follow the light ahead
to come out the other side.

Children too big to be mice
were taken to a hillside
where they were turned into blackbirds.
Up, up the green hill they went,
(not flying, for none knew how),
led by two parent birds,
wings fluttering — hard to see
as it was not yet dawn,
dark figures up and over,
helping one another
they scrambled silently.
No one spoke, for fear of owls,
and ever-watching hawks.

Bird flock up and over
on tiny bird-feet, up and over
the green hillock to a warm hut.
Porridge and warm milk
was served by a red-faced lady.
The mice had already arrived,
coal dust and soot all over them.
The Mouse King, beaming,
stood in the back and drank beer.

And this is how they all
remembered it:
“Blackbirds and Mice,”
(or “Mice and Blackbirds”?)
in a game of silence.

When they were grown and old
they went back to the old country,
were shown the coal-mine entry
so small it seemed made for dwarves,
peeked at the way in, then on
the hill’s other side, the way out.

They climbed the alpine meadow
where nuns had led the blackbirds,
habits fluttering, to the cottage
where they had breakfasted.
It was all real: the German mine,
the German hill, the Swiss cottage.

In 1940, they were mice and blackbirds.
Most never saw their parents again.
Some home-towns bombed, no longer existed.
Blackbirds and Mice, they learned
new words, but never forget
the all-stakes game of silent flight.