Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

1.
Among twenty snowy peaks,
The only shifting thing,
Was the eye of the blackbird.

2.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree,
In which there are three blackbirds.

3.
The blackbird whirled in the fall winds.
It was a small bit of the unful play.

4.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

5.
I do not know which to forechoose,
The comeliness of a stringbent steven
Or the comeliness of come-hither speech,
The blackbird whistling
Or nar after.

6.
Icicles fill the long window
With reavened glass.
The shadow of the Blackbird
Thwarsed it, to and fro.
The mood
Drawn in the shadow
An unknowable end.

7.
Oh thin men of Haddam,
Why do you fathom golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

8.
I know gilt-edged wordstrains,
And sharp, unshunnable lilts.
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is whelm’d
In what I know.

9.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many wreaths.

10.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the sirens of bliss
Would call out sharply.

11.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass hansom.
Once, a fear shook him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his outrysting
For blackbirds,

12.
The stream is flowing.
The blackbird must be flying.

13.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.