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.