Poetry Monday: Mockingbird

The Mockingbird

Look one way and the sun is going down,
Look the other and the moon is rising.
The sparrow's shadow's longer than the lawn.
The bats squeak: "Night is here"; the birds cheep: "Day is gone."
On the willow's highest branch, monopolizing
Day and night, cheeping, squeaking, soaring,
The mockingbird is imitating life.

All day the mockingbird has owned the yard.
As light first woke the world, the sparrows trooped
Onto the seedy lawn: the mockingbird
Chased them off shrieking.  Hour by hour, fighting hard
To make the world his own, he swooped
On thrushes, thrashers, jays, and chickadees--
At noon he drove away a big black cat.

Now, in the moonlight, he sits here and sings.
A thrush is singing, then a thrasher, then a jay---
Then, all at once, a cat begins meowing.
A mockingbird can sound like anything.
He imitates the world he drove away
So well that for a minute, in the moonlight,
Which one's the mockingbird?  which one's the world?

--Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell in 1947

Randall Jarrell was an eminent 20th century American poet, critic and author of children's books.  He served in the US Army Air Force in World War II, and his war poems are among his most famous. He was among the few outstanding poets of that war.  His last years were marred by depression, especially triggered by the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. This poem is from his last book, published in 1965, the year of his death, titled The Lost World.