Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Bird and the Tree

By Ridgely Torrence

BLACKBIRD, blackbird in the cage,

There’s something wrong tonight.

Far off the sheriff’s footfall dies,

The minutes crawl like last year’s flies

Between the bars, and like an age

The hours are long tonight.

The sky is like a heavy lid

Out here beyond the door tonight.

What’s that? A mutter down the street.

What’s that? The sound of yells and feet.

For what you didn’t do or did

You’ll pay the score tonight.

No use to reek with reddened sweat,

No use to whimper and to sweat.

They’ve got the rope; they’ve got the guns,

They’ve got the courage and the guns;

And that’s the reason why tonight

No use to ask them any more.

They’ll fire the answer through the door—

You’re out to die tonight.

There where the lonely cross-road lies,

There is no place to make replies;

But silence, inch by inch, is there,

And the right limb for a lynch is there;

And a lean daw waits for both your eyes,

Blackbird.

Perhaps you’ll meet again some place.

Look for the mask upon the face:

That’s the way you’ll know them there—

A white mask to hide the face.

And you can halt and show them there

The things that they are deaf to now,

And they can tell you what they meant—

To wash the blood with blood. But how

If you are innocent?

Blackbird singer, blackbird mute,

They choked the seed you might have found.

Out of a thorny field you go—

For you it may be better so—

And leave the sowers of the ground

To eat the harvest of the fruit,

Blackbird.