THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

by: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

      I
       
      Among twenty snowy mountains,
      The only moving thing
      Was the eye of the black bird.
       
      II
       
      I was of three minds,
      Like a tree
      In which there are three blackbirds.
       
      III
       
      The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
      It was a small part of the pantomime.
       
      IV
       
      A man and a woman
      Are one.
      A man and a woman and a blackbird
      Are one.
       
      V
       
      I do not know which to prefer,
      The beauty of inflections
      Or the beauty of innuendoes,
      The blackbird whistling
      Or just after.
       
      VI
       
      Icicles filled the long window
      With barbaric glass.
      The shadow of the blackbird
      Crossed it, to and fro.
      The mood
      Traced in the shadow
      An indecipherable cause.
       
      VII
       
      O thin men of Haddam,
      Why do you imagine golden birds?
      Do you not see how the blackbird
      Walks around the feet
      Of the women about you?
       
      VIII
       
      I know noble accents
      And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
      But I know, too,
      That the blackbird is involved
      In what I know.
       
      IX
       
      When the blackbird flew out of sight,
      It marked the edge
      Of one of many circles.
       
      X
       
      At the sight of blackbirds
      Flying in a green light,
      Even the bawds of euphony
      Would cry out sharply.
       
      XI
       
      He rode over Connecticut
      In a glass coach.
      Once, a fear pierced him,
      In that he mistook
      The shadow of his equipage
      For blackbirds.
       
      XII
       
      The river is moving.
      The blackbird must be flying.
       
      XIII
       
      It was evening all afternoon.
      It was snowing
      And it was going to snow.
      The blackbird sat
      In the cedar-limbs.

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is reprinted from Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, December 1917.

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