Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
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,
They beauty of inflictions
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 image 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 the blackbirds
Flying in a green light
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass couch.
Once, a fear pieced him, In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For the 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.
This poem is cited here in its entirety as it was printed reprinted in The Norton Anthology
of Modern Poetry, 2nd edition, Edited by Richard Ellman and Robert O’Clair ed., pages 287-288.
