'The World Was Still at War'

Humans presume to rank other members of the animal kingdom. Some have earned bad P.R., like cockroaches, leeches and the dreaded candiru. Few mourn their extermination. Others, such as kitties and puppies, we cuddle and spend billions on every year keeping alive (except when gassing them at the pound). Still other species are too exotically ambiguous to deserve unmixed revulsion or love. Consider the capybara. Take a look at those choppers and note the resemblance to Ford Madox Ford. 

Capybaras are the world’s largest rodent, native to South America. Gail White welcomes their arrival in “The Good News,” the “Poem of the Week” at Light, the journal of light verse. She includes an epigraph, “Capybara Quartet Born at Schönbrunn Zoo,” taken from the website Zooborns, which specializes in the fuzzy and cute:

 

“When I woke up this morning,

the world was still at war

and gas was more expensive

than it was the day before.

The headlines were disasters

except for the debut

of the baby capybaras

at the Schönbrunn zoo.

 

“Hurricanes are forming

and famine is in sight.

The news I went to sleep on

has worsened overnight.

The clouds are dark above me

but skies are bright and blue

on the baby capybaras

at the Schönbrunn zoo.”

 

I sympathize with White’s reasoning. She merely restates Gibbon’s observation that history is “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” I’ve never knocked a newspaper for reporting bad news. That’s its job. But who can resist these Austrian cousins of the guinea pig? Baby capybaras are undeniably fuzzy and cuddly, with the solemn expressions we cherish on the faces of most baby mammals, even humans. Sure beats Russian atrocities in Ukraine and famine in Ethiopia.