White Eyes
White Eyes - meaning Summary
Winter Transformed by Wonder
The poem imagines a restless winter bird whose brief song and movement seem to summon snowfall. As the bird finally sleeps, the speaker enlarges it into a mysterious, benevolent presence: its feathers become snow falling over the world. The poem treats nature as both observable and unknowable, using the speaker's uncertainty about the bird's name to make room for wonder and imaginative connection.
Read Complete AnalysesIn winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees where the wind-bird with its white eyes shoves and pushes among the branches. Like any of us he wants to go to sleep, but he's restless— he has an idea, and slowly it unfolds from under his beating wings as long as he stays awake. But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last. So, it's over. In the pine-crown he makes his nest, he's done all he can. I don't know the name of this bird, I only imagine his glittering beak tucked in a white wing while the clouds— which he has summoned from the north— which he has taught to be mild, and silent— thicken, and begin to fall into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird that loves us, that is asleep now, and silent— that has turned itself into snow.
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