Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Lucia Maria Perillo’s "Shrike Tree" is a meditation on violence, survival, and the uneasy beauty found in brutality. The poem centers around the speaker’s memory of a dead hawthorn tree, transformed into a macabre display by a shrike—a small predatory bird known for impaling its prey on thorns or barbed wire. Through precise, unflinching imagery, Perillo draws parallels between the shrike’s natural ruthlessness and the larger, indifferent forces of life itself. The poem navigates the space between horror and admiration, between the cruelty of existence and the strange, stark artifacts it leaves behind.

The opening lines set a scene of daily familiarity: “Most days back then I would walk by the shrike tree, / a dead hawthorn at the base of a hill.” The casual rhythm of “Most days back then” suggests routine, a past life in which this grim spectacle was a regular part of the speaker’s world. The phrase “shrike tree” carries an eerie duality—both a literal description and something almost mythic, as if the bird has claimed the tree for its own dark purpose. The hawthorn is “dead” but remains functional, a stage for violence rather than mere decay.

The next lines expose the gruesome reality of this tree’s purpose: “The shrike had pinned smaller birds on the tree’s black thorns / and the sun had stripped them of their feathers.” The shrike’s hunting method—impaling its prey—is factual, yet here it is presented with poetic restraint. The “black thorns” reinforce an almost gothic severity, while the image of the sun stripping away feathers suggests both exposure and inevitability. The sun, like the shrike, is simply doing what it does, indifferent to the suffering it reveals.

The speaker notes the different positions of the impaled birds: “Some of the dead ones hung at eye level / while some burned holes in the sky overhead.” The first detail—“hung at eye level”—creates a sense of direct confrontation, as if the speaker must face these remnants each time they pass. The second image—“burned holes in the sky overhead”—is strikingly abstract, suggesting that the birds, though lifeless, still exert some force on the world. Their absence becomes presence, their empty sockets like scorched gaps in the sky.

A stark conclusion follows: “At least it is honest, / the body apparent / and not rotting in the dirt.” The speaker appreciates the visible reality of death here—there is no pretense, no burial, no concealment. Unlike the sanitized or hidden deaths of human experience, the shrike’s tree makes its violence explicit. This recognition sets up the poem’s broader engagement with the nature of suffering—both animal and human.

The speaker then admits an important limitation: “And I, having never seen the shrike at work, / can only imagine how the breasts were driven into the branches.” This absence—the unseen moment of capture—leaves space for speculation. The violence itself is never witnessed, only its aftermath. This parallels human experience: we often do not see suffering unfold in real time, only its remnants, its effects.

The shrike itself appears only briefly: “When I saw him he’d be watching from a different tree / with his mask like Zorro / and the gray cape of his wings.” This description anthropomorphizes the bird, giving it the dramatic persona of a masked outlaw. The “gray cape” suggests both elegance and concealment—the shrike is a silent killer, always observing from a distance. Yet the speaker acknowledges the ease with which one could mistake the shrike for something less sinister: “At first glance he could have been a mockingbird or a jay / if you didn’t take note of how his beak was hooked.” The detail of the “hooked” beak is small but crucial, revealing the true nature of the predator.

The next lines challenge human moralizing: “If you didn’t know the ruthlessness of what he did— / ah, but that is a human judgment.” The aside “ah, but that is a human judgment” acknowledges the speaker’s own impulse to categorize the shrike’s actions as “ruthless.” But nature does not operate under human ethics. The shrike does not kill out of malice but out of necessity.

The poem then shifts to a reflection on memory and time: “They are mute, of course, a silence at the center of a bigger silence, / these rawhide ornaments, their bald skulls showing.” The impaled birds, “mute” in death, embody a broader quiet, suggesting the vast, indifferent hush of the natural world. The phrase “silence at the center of a bigger silence” gives death a gravitational weight, as if it exerts its own quiet force.

The speaker’s memory intensifies: “And notice how I’ve slipped into the present tense / as if they were still with me.” The shift in tense is subtle but significant—though the shrike tree belongs to the past, its image persists, becoming something that still is. The next line confirms this: “Of course they are still with me.” The birds, the shrike, the tree—all remain lodged in the speaker’s consciousness, unchanged by time.

The poem pivots into its final, deeply personal revelation: “They hang there, desiccating / by the trail where I walked, back when I could walk, / before life pinned me on its thorn.” Here, the speaker draws a direct parallel between their own condition and the shrike’s victims. The phrase “back when I could walk” suggests that the speaker has suffered an immobilizing event—perhaps illness or disability. Just as the birds were impaled, the speaker has been “pinned” by life itself, rendered powerless by circumstances beyond their control.

The next lines offer a grim concession: “It is ferocious, life, but it must eat, / then leaves us with the artifact.” Life, like the shrike, is merciless, driven by survival rather than sentiment. What remains—what life “leaves us”—are artifacts, remnants of suffering. The impaled birds become symbols of what life consumes and discards.

The poem’s closing image is haunting and strangely beautiful: “Which is: these black silhouettes in the midday sun, / strict and jagged, like an Asian script.” The impaled bodies are reduced to abstract shapes, unreadable yet inscribed upon the world. The simile “like an Asian script” suggests something intricate, foreign, and mysterious—a language of suffering beyond human comprehension.

The final lines offer a paradoxical perspective on fate: “A tragedy that is not without its glamour. / Not without the runes of the wizened meat.” The phrase “not without its glamour” is unsettling—it suggests that even suffering has an aesthetic, a presence that cannot be ignored. The “runes of the wizened meat” further this idea—these bodies bear a message, though one indecipherable to human understanding.

The closing thought is devastating in its fatalistic wonder: “Because imagine the luck!—to be plucked from the air, / to be drenched and dried in the sun’s bright voltage— / well, hard luck is luck, nonetheless. / With a chunk of sky in each eye socket. / And the pierced heart strung up like a pearl.” The irony in “imagine the luck!” is biting—the “luck” of the impaled birds is only that they have been chosen for an indifferent fate. Yet, even in this brutality, there is something radiant—the “chunk of sky” in the empty sockets suggests a kind of transcendence, and the “pierced heart strung up like a pearl” gives the birds a grim, almost sacred adornment.

"Shrike Tree" is a poem of violence, memory, and the inescapable nature of fate. Perillo’s speaker, caught between observation and personal reckoning, finds in the shrike’s tree a reflection of life’s own cruelty. The poem does not offer easy answers—only the acknowledgment that existence, in its raw and merciless form, is both terrifying and strangely luminous. Life, like the shrike, must eat. What remains are the artifacts.

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