I Among twenty snowy mountains,   The only moving thing   Was the eye of the blackbird.   III was of three minds,   Like a tree   In which there are three blackbirds.   IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   It was a small part of the pantomime.   IVA man and a woman   Are one.   A man and a woman and a blackbird   Are one.   VI do not know which to prefer,   The beauty of inflections   Or the beauty of innuendoes,   The blackbird whistling   Or just after.   VIIcicles 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.   VIIO 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?   VIIII know noble accents   And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   But I know, too,   That the blackbird is involved   In what I know.   IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight,   It marked the edge   Of one of many circles.   XAt the sight of blackbirds   Flying in a green light,   Even the bawds of euphony   Would cry out sharply.   XIHe rode over Connecticut   In a glass coach.   Once, a fear pierced him,   In that he mistook   The shadow of his equipage   For blackbirds.   XIIThe river is moving.   The blackbird must be flying.   XIIIIt was evening all afternoon.   It was snowing   And it was going to snow.   The blackbird sat   In the cedar-limbs.ENJOY MOREThe copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: Copyright Credit: Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens.

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