Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Bird" is a meditation on suffering—both personal and communal—and the ways in which we attempt, and often fail, to distance ourselves from it. The poem begins with an assault of sound: "Even when I held my hands over my ears I could hear the sirens squealing down the avenue: somebody else’s trouble: broken or bleeding or burned." The sirens signify an emergency, a distant but persistent suffering occurring beyond the speaker’s immediate world. The phrase "somebody else’s trouble" carries an uneasy detachment, suggesting both relief and guilt—relief that the crisis is not her own, but an awareness that suffering is never far away.

This external clamor is mirrored by a "bird in the ash tree" whose cries resemble "the hungry cry of a human child." The comparison of the bird’s call to a child’s wail introduces a sense of urgency and helplessness. The speaker, disturbed by the noise, tries to silence it, first by yelling, then by leaving the house. Yet the sound follows her, "down the four flights to the courtyard," "around the corner to the mailbox." The bird’s persistence echoes the inescapability of suffering, how it seeps into everyday life despite our best efforts to ignore or escape it.

The poem then makes an abrupt turn, referencing Cool Hand Luke, the classic film about a rebellious prisoner broken by the system. The speaker recalls Luke’s plea: "Just don’t hit me again Boss. Please just don’t hit me again." This moment, in which Luke is physically and spiritually defeated, marks a shift in the poem from external disturbances to internal wounds. The reference to Luke being abandoned by his fellow prisoners—"his men turned against him and spit in his food"—suggests a deeper betrayal, a moment when suffering isolates rather than unites.

From here, the poem dissolves into a list of objects and absences: "No attic anymore; no stumbling drunk, he’s dead; no belt; no pencil; no safety pin." Each item hints at a personal history of trauma, possibly connected to childhood. The "stumbling drunk, he’s dead" could reference an abusive father or figure whose presence once loomed over the speaker’s life but is now gone. The belt, pencil, and safety pin evoke remnants of discipline, creativity, or makeshift solutions, but in their absence, they feel like echoes of something unresolved.

The final lines return to the present moment, a "summer afternoon in a small city: porch windows, bird singing." Here, the speaker acknowledges the vastness of the city—"How many hands does a city have?"—suggesting an overwhelming network of lives, each with its own joys and wounds. The idea that "yesterday each one was a sound" reinforces the omnipresence of pain and struggle, how suffering reverberates across time and space.

Yet, in the closing sentence, something shifts: "And the bird’s trouble? It must have gotten solved—all that insistent complaint. By the time I fell asleep, it was quiet." The resolution is ambiguous. Did the bird stop crying because it found relief? Or did it stop because it was silenced—by exhaustion, by nature, by something darker? The lack of certainty mirrors the human condition: suffering either resolves or fades into the background, but it never truly disappears. The world keeps moving, and eventually, we sleep.

"Bird" is a powerful exploration of how suffering lingers, how it refuses to be ignored, and how we attempt to live alongside it. The poem moves fluidly between external and internal struggles, weaving together personal pain, collective sorrow, and the ever-present background noise of the world. In its understated way, it suggests that while pain may be relentless, so too is the passage of time, and sometimes, by nightfall, even the loudest cries go quiet.

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