Bird
Bird - meaning Summary
Comfort in a Dying Bird
The speaker gently holds a dying bird and watches its life recede, noting death as a quiet, physical presence. The poem moves from close sensory attention — hands, eyes, ears — to a yearning that the speaker's own soul might accompany the bird beyond pain. The sky and its "starry branches" become a hopeful image of release and continuity. The tone balances grief and tenderness, framing the bird’s collapse as both an end and a possible passage that invites sympathetic longing rather than only despair.
Read Complete AnalysesI hold it gently in my cupped hands, and know that it is dying. See, over the two hemispheres of its eyes death is dragging its white sheets, and the whole world of this bird is about to stiffen in my hands. Bird, I wish my soul could escape with yours into the starry branches of the sky. Already my ears have picked out the songs you will sing there, bird of the broken wing, bird of my hands.
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