So much has happened in the century since this was first published, yet it remains fresh.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
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?
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O at the Edges 
Fresh indeed. This is such a wonderful poem. I had the chance, two years ago, to teach it among other poems to a group of freshmen. Some tuned out, but quite a few were entranced. Perhaps I planted some seeds….
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How I wish I’d been introduced to poetry with a poem such as this!
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I know! I didn’t encounter it until grad school.
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One of my all-time favorite poems.
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Same here. Stevens still speaks to me. More than ever!
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And funny but while I’m not nearly as old as the poem, it is a bit frightening to think that it is a Century old. Century is such a big word.
And yes, it is still very fresh.
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I know what you mean. I was browsing one of my shelves the other day, and realized that I’d achieved an age that some of the poets on it – James Wright, Berryman, Richard Hugo – never reached. How the hell did that happen?
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Usually they died from diseases we can now treat or illnesses we now understand to be the driving force behind their then unexplained suffering. Hugo dealt with both depression and leukemia…
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Cancer, depression, alcoholism, heart disease, unhappy childhoods… I’m grateful to have evaded most of these thus far. I feel that I’m just beginning to write, at an age they never reached.
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Beautifully entrancing, thank you Robert for presenting this marvelous piece.
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Glad you liked it, Ivor. Stevens inspires!
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Nice one Robert, not
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Whoops, all thumbs again, thanks for the compliment 😊
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Oh wow brilliant. Thank you for sharing!
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Stevens was brilliant!
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A long-time favorite. Never gets old. (K)
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It doesn’t!
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Have read the mention of blackbirds in so many poems. Could you help and explain the significance of using this particular bird in poetry?
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Apologies for jumping in ahead of Robert, but there are a lot of reasons for the various species of blackbirds to appear in poems. They can be fairly big birds, and they are not afraid of hanging around people, including poets, so there’s observational material to work with. Like white swans, they have a built-in visual contrast that lets them symbolize abstracts, conventionally death or mystery.
If one watches them closely, their intelligence may be noticed, which adds a practical addition to their mystery.Their flocking behavior and social organization can be spectacular, they can fill trees and explode out of them like dark, instantly coordinated, clouds. I don’t recall any poems that feature that off hand though.
As Stevens often composed poems while walking to work, I wonder if observed blackbirds then.
Anyway, glad to see this poem here. Enormously influential to me after encountering it as young man or old boy. For a few months I kept writing poems with varied length sections and Roman numerals. I doubt I was the only one (grin).
Anyway, thanks to Robert for reminding me of this poem!
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Thanks for jumping in, Frank. And then of course you must consider the very nature and symbolism of the bird archetype, combined with the descriptor “black.” Both carry a great deal of baggage. And if you look at particular species of black birds, especially the corvids – crows and ravens – you’ll see that they appear in mythology as uncanny tricksters, as beings connected to the spirits or the underworld. There’s simply a lot there!
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