I
Yeah, you know, among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird and my grey guitar.
II
I was of three minds,
One for sorrow, two for joy,
Three for girls in which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds
Rendering up my body into the burning heart of God
in the belly of the black-winged bird.
IV
A man and Maria
Are one.
A man and Maria and a blackbird
Are one.
Round here,
We all look the same.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird coming through in stereo
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
I guess the winter makes you laugh
A little slower, makes you talk a little lower.
VII
O Elisabeth,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see there’s a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin?
VIII
She knows noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
She says, I know, it’s only in my head
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
Sha la, la, la, la, la, la, la
Yeah
Uh, huh
Yeah
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
She’s been crying, I’ve been thinking
And I am the Rain King.
XI
She rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach with a suitcase in her hand.
Once, a fear pierced her,
In that she mistook
The shadow of a boy who looked like Elvis
For blackbirds.
XII
It’s raining in Baltimore.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
I was wasted in the afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs
Waiting on the train.