Home > Poetry Magazine > Bird at the Window

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

Bird at the Window

By Sophie Cabot Black b. 1958

Beyond is a brightness

I am not equal to

Yet what I see

Turns into what I want,

And to bring nothing but this body

To pass through

The one thing between

Myself and what I crave,

Almost done, the world a ruin

Of leaves, winter at the throat,

My song over and over until

So familiar I can do

What I am about to do

While you who rise from the table

And walk from room to room

Will remember only the sound

Of what cast herself through

All that glass, instead of the song

That was sung until finally

You would ask to know more.

Source: Poetry (June 2008).

Biography

Raised on a small New England farm, poet Sophie Cabot Black received a BA from Marlboro College and an MFA from Columbia University. Black’s collections of poetry include The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and The Descent (2004), which won the Connecticut Book Award. Black’s lyrical poems are both revelatory and elusive, exploring a landscape sharpened . . .

Continue reading this biography