Lucille Lang Day

     Deadly Hats

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries

hundreds of millions of birds

died to adorn women’s hats. Picture

a crown of snowy egret plumes

or a whole African starling perched

on a hat of black silk faille and velvet

trimmed with cord and jet beads.

Whole nutcracker heads were placed

among golden pheasant feathers

on animal hide treated with mercury.

Taxidermists used arsenic to prevent

decay, and as milliners with mercury

and arsenic poisoning went insane,

“mad as a hatter” became an apt phrase.

Degas, Manet and Renoir painted

the milliners’ shops and worktables

and ladies in their finery, trying on hats,

admiring displays and strolling in Paris

as though trapped in an invisible net

where they couldn’t see how deadly

the beauty, the birds no longer free.