BY WALLACE STEVENS
I
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?
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.
-
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sub rosa 
Great poem! Have you found the variations? There are hundreds, I’m sure. But there’s a different way to play with it:
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
or was that…
Among twenty moving blackbirds,
the only snowy thing
was the eye of the mountain.
Poetry is cool like that. As long as the words are there, in any logical order, the same information gets passed on. 🙂
Thanks for listening.
For an erasure fan like me its not even such a big deal with the words … 🙂
Beautiful
“It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow. ”
It is hot here. But these words bring me back a few months to a cold winter afternoon….looking out my window at the grey-white sky, when nothing is moving (except the eye of blackbird maybe!), especially me.
Beautiful lines!
I love this poem. It reminds me that Emily whose blog is called “It was Evening all Afternoon” doesn’t post anymore. She wrote such amazingly complex and carefully worded reviews.
Didn’t think of it – but you’re right, Evening all Afternoon, a beautiful blog:
http://www.eveningallafternoon.com/
I was just thinking about this poem yesterday and here it is – another coincidence!
almost mystical … the world wide web; connecting everything – !