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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POEMS BY WALLACE STEVENS |
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