The Kookaburras
The Kookaburras - meaning Summary
The Burden of Inaction
The poem confronts the lasting guilt of failing to act when compassion demands action. Remembering caged kookaburras that wanted only to return home, the speaker recognizes cowardice and delay within the self. The birds' likely deaths make the missed chance irreversible. Images of sunlight, bones, and darkness show how ordinary inaction can become a source of enduring moral unrest.
Read Complete AnalysesIn every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator. In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting to stride out of a cloud and lift its wings. The kookaburras, pressed against the edge of their cage, asked me to open the door. Years later I remember how I didn't do it, how instead I walked away. They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs. They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly home to their river. By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them. As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers. Nothing else has changed either. Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap. The sun shines on the latch of their cage. I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
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