Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

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.