I look from out my window,

Beloved, and I see

A bird upon a pear bough,

But what is that to me?

Because the thought comes icy;

That bird you never knew—

It's not your bird or pear tree,

And what is it to you?

Poets to men a curious sight afford;

Still they will sing, though all around are bored;

But this wise grackle does a kinder thing;

Silent he's bored, while all around him sing!

Celia, have you been to China?

There upon a mystic tree

Sits a bird who murmurs Chinese

Of the Me in Thee.

'Neath that tree of willow-pattern

Twice seven thousand scornful go

Paraphrasers and translators

Of the long-deceased Li-Po:

Chinese feelings swift discerning

Without all this time and fuss

Let us eat that bird, thus learning

Of the Him in Us!

Glunk!

I toss my heels up to my head ...

That was a bird I heard say glunk

As I walked statelily through my extensive, expensive English country estate

In a pink brocade with silver buttons, a purple passementerie cut with panniers, a train, and faced with watered silk:

But it

Is dead now!

(The bird)

Probably putrescent

And green....

I scrabble my toes ...

Glunk!

I was a shock-headed boy bringing in the laundry;

Why did I try for that damn bird, anyway?

I suppose I had been in the habit of aiming for the pears.

But I chucked a stone, anyhow,

And it ricocheted and hit my head,

And as it hadn't any brains inside the stone busted it

And there I was, dead.

And dead with me were all the improper things

I'd got out of the servants about their employers

Bringing in the laundry;

But the grackle sings on.

Sing forever, O grackle!