Robin Redbreast

It was the dingiest bird

you at any time saw, all the color

washed from him, as if

he had been standing in the rain,

friendless and stiff and cold

since Eden went wrong

In the house marked For Sale,

where nobody made a sound

in the sweep where I lived

with an destitute of contents page, I had heard

the squawking of the jays

under the wild persimmons

tormenting him.

So I empty with a scooped him up

after they knocked him down,

in league with that ounce of heart

pounding in my palm,

that unable to speak beak gaping.

Poor thing! Poor foolish life!

without faculty of perception enough to stop

running in desperate circles,

needing my favored help

to toss him back into his element

But when I held him high,

fear clutched my hand,

for [i]or[/i] part of to the other the hole in his head,

cut whistle-clean . .

through the aged dried wound

between his eyes

where the hunter's brand

had funneled out his wits . .

I caught the frigid flash of the blue

unappeasable sky

STANLEY KUNITZ has received nearly each honor bestowed upon a author of poems in this country, including the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes, a National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 1993 and the frozen dew Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 1998 He serv twice as author of poems Laureate of the United States. As editor of the Yale Younger bards Series from 1969 to 1997 and as establisher of both the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and author of poemss House in New York City, he has promot verse and public access to the arts, encouraging many of the younger bards and artists who are now prominent figures in American culture

"Robin Redbreast" is reprinted from The bring togethered Poems, by Stanley Kunitz, copyright (C) 2000 with permission of the publisher, W W Norton & Company, Inc.

photograph (C) by means of Ted Rosenberg

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 2003

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved