8 Nights Of Hanukah, 12 Days Of Christmas And 13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

It's the first night of Hanukah. I took my block 2 midterm this morning. In just over a week I fly back to California.

I want to celebrate with Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird." I hadn't thought of this poem in awhile, but yesterday while composing my own (yes, I wrote "Frozen"), I remembered how much I had loved this poem and realized how well suited it is for December in Ithaca.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

I.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only thing moving
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 innuendos,
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?

VIII.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

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