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Sport 39: 2011
THE EYE OF THE BLACKBIRD
THE EYE OF THE BLACKBIRD
A couple of tuis are scrapping in a tree by one of the entrances to the university (Gate 3, it’s boldly called), then suddenly they are flying through the air, horizontal, their passage all feathery beatings and thrashings—and they continue their frenzied argument in a small tree to the right of the steps I’m just about to climb. They are black tufts, iridescent, splashes of white throat-feather. The sound of their wings is strong, like one of those whirring Maori instruments.
The odd thing is that, a fraction of a second later, a blackbird zips across after them from the first tree and perches on a nearby branch to watch proceedings. Now I watch the blackbird, and the blackbird watches the skirmishing tuis—for what seems an age, though it is probably only 30 seconds. And then, show over, the blackbird flies back to its original tree, because the tuis have flown off somewhere else entirely.
I’d always thought Wallace Stevens’ blackbird was some figure for the way reality shifts, remaining unsettled and unsettling. But perhaps it is some version of the writer: interested, keeping close, keeping a bit of a distance.