Time

The blackbird in the poem is both a marker of time and human presence. It is notable that in nearly every canto the blackbird is mentioned in a different tense than in canto that precedes it. It is thus represented as discernible through time, from different removes. This timelessness is juxtaposed with the singularity of the moment in which the bird is first encountered. The solitary movement of the bird’s eye amidst a still landscape renders the perspective of the narrator as one who is marked by time as well.

The final canto expresses this tension between timelessness and periodicity with the line: “It was evening all afternoon” (13). This statement suggests that time is relative, a phenomenon made noticeable for the narrator through the encounter of the blackbird. It is as if through the bird that the narrator encounters past, present, and future, enveloped together...