Babel Tower [antikvár]

It might begin:The thrush has his anvil or altar on one fallen stone in a heap, gold and grey, roughly squared and shaped, hot in the sun and mossy in the shade. The massive rubble is in a clearing on a high hill. Below is the canopy of the forest. There is a spring, of course, and a litde river flowing from it.The thrush appears to be listening to the earth. In fact he is looking, with his sideways stare, for his secret prey in the grass, in the fallen leaves. He stabs, he pierces, he carries the shell with its soft centre to his stone. He lifts the shell, he cracks it down. He repeats. He repeats. He extracts the bruised flesh, he sips, he juggles, he swallows. His throat ripples. He sings. His song is Hquid syllables, short cries, serial trills. His feathers gleam, creamy and brown-spotted. He repeats. He repeats.Characters are carved on the stones. Maybe runes, maybe cuneiform, maybe ideograms of a bird's eye or a creature walking, or pricking spears and hatchets. Here are broken alphabets, a and, C and T, A and G. Round the stones are the broken shells, helical whorls like empty ears in which no hammer beats on no anvil. They nesde. Their sound is britde. Their Hps are pure white {Helix hortensis) and shining black (Helix nemoralis). They are striped and coiled, gold, rose, chalk, umber, they ratde together as the quick bird steps among them. In the stones are the coiled remains of their congeners, millions of years old.The thrush sings his limited lovely notes. He stands on the stone, which we call his anvil or altar, and repeats his song. Why does his song give us such pleasure?