Nightbirds
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
This was inspired by, but also written in answer to, John Keats’s poem about a very different bird and, of course, about poets and poetry.
no nightingales
are here
and this is not
an ode
yet I can hear
a bird
cloaked in dark leaves
that brush my window
trilling at 2 am
as though to signal
dawn
insistent, loud
no hesitation mars
the run of notes
in this cadenza
as it mistakes
my lamp
for risen sun
but oh
how very wrong
a bird can be
for nothing bright or warm
shines
in this room
only light that
freezes
what it touches
into ice
that cracks
while I am
rigid
listening fearing
soon this music too will
break
another hapless body
plummet
for whatever gets too close
is cursed
must mirror me
must seize up
shatter
panes of glass
are no defense
against the pain
intractable
I feel and
spread
around me
even Keats’s
“viewless wings of Poesy”
would droop
then drop
felled like a rocket
doomed
to burst in useless
fragments
too small
to build into
a verse
can this bird
overcome?
can this voice
heal?
what hope is there
for singers
like us
in the night?
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About the Author
Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, as well as a widely published poet. In 2021, she suffered an injury that left her with permanent nerve damage, chronic pain, and an invisible impairment.