Poetrie: Robin Redbreast

About

by Stanley Kunitz

It was the dingiest bird

you ever 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 room where I lived

with an empty page, I had heard

the squawking of the jays

under the wild persimmons

tormenting him.

So I scooped him up

after they knocked him down,

in league with that ounce of heart

pounding in my palm,

that dumb beak gaping.

Poor thing! Poor foolish life!

without sense enough to stop

running in desperate circles,

needing my lucky help

to toss him back to his element.

But when I held him high,

fear clutched my hand,

for through the hole in his head,

cut whistle-clean...

through the old dried wound

between his eyes

where the hunter's brand

had tunneled out his wits...

I caught the cold flash of the blue

unappeasable sky.