Today the poem is Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, first published in 1917.  I don’t know if Stevens had in mind the popular meaning of depression, aka the black bird  – as, for example, in the 1926 song Bye, Bye Blackbird (music by Ray Henderson, lyrics by Mort Dixon).  Viewing the meaning that way changes the poem from simple descriptions of nature to something more moving.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Today, an orientalist poem by German romantic, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, famously set to music by Felix Mendelssohn (published as Opus 34, #3, in 1834-6).

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
Upon wings of song,
my dearest one, I’ll transport you
to the Ganges plains,
Where I know the most lovely spot.
There is a garden of red blooms,
and in the solemn moonlight,
the lotus flowers await
Their devoted little sister.
The violets giggle and cuddle,
and stare up at the stars above,
Secretly the roses recite
Their fragant fairy tales.
The pious, smart gazelles,
Leap up and listen;
and in the distance whisper
The waves of a holy stream.
There we will lie down,
under the palm-tree,
and drink of love and peace
And dream our sacred dream.

Reference:
Heinrich Heine [1827]: Buch der Lieder: Lyrisches Intermezzo (Translation by SH.)
Mendelssohn’s fascination with Oriental ideas was expressed in an 1840 letter to his brother Paul, urging him to read Friedrich Ruckert’s book of sufist and hindu translations, Erlaubiches and Beschauliches aus dem Morgenlaude (Establishments and Contemplations from the Orient, 1836-1838), which provided Mendelssohn with “delight beyond measure”.   He was also a close friend of the first Professor of Oriental Literature at the University of London (the institution later called University College, London), Friedrich August Rosen (1805 – 1837).  More on Mendelssohn’s orientalism here.
Previous poetry posts can be found here.

Today’s poem is by Gerry Moll (1900 – 1997), an Australian poet from Murtoa, in the Wimmera, who studied at Harvard University and then lived for many years in Oregon, USA.  Moll was apparently a fine teacher of literature, and students who took his Shakespeare class in the 1920s still remembered him seven decades later.
One cannot read this poem this week without thinking of the brave people of Iran.

White Violets
This Spring the white violets
Came early and everywhere
Greet me with their white expectant faces.
For years I’d kept them sternly in their places:
A rock-bowl here, a thin, neat border there.
They’ve broken lines and every boundary
A gardener sets for such;
Even the lawn, still winter-brown, is a sea
Foamed over by them and the warming air,
Filled with their scent, proclaims their empery.
Why did they come so early? Did they know
That one was the way to still the hand
That bestowed blessings on them with its touch?
And why such masses? Did they fear
She might not see them with her pain-dimmed eyes,
Or, hastening on the way she had to go,
Would miss them at this turning of the year?
Grief to these questions asks for no replies.

 
References:
Previous poems in this series are here.
Ernest G. Moll [1992]:  The View from a Ninetieth Birthday:  Lyrical Poems of Old Age. La Jolla, CA:  La Jolla Poets Press.  page 48.

The turn of the month allows the posting of a poem by Robert Southwell SJ with a reference to May flowers.   The reference to Dives and Lazar in Stanza 4 is a reference to the story in Luke 16: 19-31.  Southwell’s personal history as an aristocratic gentleman (which he used as cover while underground in Elizabeth’s police-state) is evident in the references to nature and country pursuits.

Scorn Not the Least
Where wards are weak and foes encountring strong
Where mightier do assault than do defend,
The feebler part puts up enforcèd wrong
And silent sees that speech could not amend.
Yet higher powers must think, though they repine,
When sun is set, the little stars will shine.
While pike doth range the seely tench doth fly,
And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish.
Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by,
These fleet afloat while those do fill the dish.
There is a time even for the worm to creep,
And suck the dew while all her foes do sleep.
The merlin cannot ever soar on high,
Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase.
The tender lark will find a time to fly,
And fearful hare to run a quiet race.
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrumps leave to grow.
In Aman’s pomp poor Mardocheus wept,
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe.
The Lazar pined while Dives’ feast was kept,
Yet he to Heaven, to Hell did Dives go.
We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May,
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.

References:
Christopher Devlin [1956]: The Life of Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr.  New York, NY, USA:  Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.
Robert Southwell [2007]:  Collected Poems.  Edited by Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney.  Manchester, UK:  Fyfield Books.
(Note:  I have modernised the spelling where sensible to do so, and added some punctuation.)
A previous poem by Robert Southwell can be found here, and all previous poetry posts here.

John Donne’s Sonnet #7 from the Divine Meditations:

At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies.
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here, on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood.

References:
[tag]John Donne[/tag] [1971]:  The Complete English Poems.  London, England: Penguin Classics. Edited by A. J. Smith. pp. 311-312.
Previous posts in this series can be found here.