Birding

Vijay Seshadri

A gray bird with a crest and a black mask.
Gilt edges the slim
tail feathers.
An eye drop of arterial blood in a flask

of gray water is the flashing red
under the wing.
A large wader, gimlet-eyed, under
the sun’s gimlet eye,

spearing frogs in the cattail
marsh. The sun itself a larger bird,
its wings manufacturing
the solar wind

that devours, that is what can devour a person—
floating in the vacuum
of perpetual space,
which is what there is and also is

itself a bird, a blackbird,
its black eye, black in black,
its sidewise look that makes you
look back.

Vijay Seshadri is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and more. He is the author of a number of poetry collections, including That Was Now, This Is Then.
Originally published:
April 1, 2020

Featured

10 Ways Ms., Sassy, and Jezebel Changed Your Life!

How contradiction drove fifty years of feminist media
Maggie Doherty

How Emily Wilson Reimagined Homer

Her boldly innovative translation of the Iliad is an epic for our time
Emily Greenwood

In the Shallows

Why do public intellectuals condescend to their readers?
Becca Rothfeld

Newsletter

Sign up for The Yale Review newsletter and keep up with news, events, and more.