Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin
Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before
one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else
and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before
where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening
it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone
so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin
trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there
it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own
Analysis:
Arguably, Merwin is attempting to state that we all are like an unknown, or in the case of the poem an unknown bird. Through this Merwin is exerting the point that we are all trying to fit in even though we may be foreign to others. To play on the use of birds, we all have a song to sing and molding that song to conformities of larger groups is difficult of inevitably going to happen. The short phrasing and lack of punctuation [Caesura, Enjambment] contributes to the poems stylistic flow.
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