Sens / Meaning Part IV

- And if there is no lining to the world?



If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,


But just a thrush on the branch?

Here, the poet counters any questions, any challenges, or any repudiations, of his hopeful faith. "If there is no lining", if there is no hidden beauty not yet revealed, then the thrush on a branch is just that, a bird on the part of a greater whole. "Thrush" in literature represents still a host of wonderful images, a bird of wide variety in color and contour, which commands great respect among ornithologists. Lining their nests with mud, protecting their young, the feed on insects predominantly. One member of the avian creatures releases once again the worlds of natural order and comity, of predatory and prey

Like the "thrush", the branch belongs to a larger creation, its existence whether in song or space pointing to a larger source. The elements of nature all declare the existence of a creator. Without overtly dismissing the cynicism of pretended detractors, the poet refutes their objective fatalism, indicating by two basic elements, a bird on the part of a tree, the processes of life, death, and existence as a whole which cannot possible exist without their being a Creator.

"Thrush" has a rich history in literature, starting with Thomas Hardy's poem "The Darkling Thrush." Describing a cold and foreboding dead, covered in Frost and Winter (personified as onerous and oppressive elements, the speaker in Hardy's poem hears

"In a full-hearted evensong



Of joy illimited;


An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,


In blast-beruffled plume,


Had chosen thus to fling his soul


Upon the growing gloom."

Even for the forlorn and befuddled speaker, disillusioned not just by the gloom but also the inexplicable joy of this bird, he cannot but remark:

So little cause for carolings



Of such ecstatic sound


Was written on terrestrial things


Afar or nigh around,


That I could think there trembled through


His happy good-night air


Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew


And I was unaware.

In Hardy's poem, like Milosz', the thrush represents a boundless optimism in a despairing world, a calm joy, like the rejoice of the prophet Habakkuk in the face of grounded despoliation, that a "blessed Hope" remains to be seen and experience, in spite of the present sorrows and gloom. Faith in the face of facts that dispute any reason for remaining faithful.