Word: blackbirds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ragged column of Nazi conscripts marching toward Poland was suddenly startled when a middle-aged recruit dropped out of line, turned around, and started marching homeward at the same tempo. A sergeant barked at him to stop, but Painter Werner Gilles replied mildly and matter-of-factly, "That blackbird up in that tree just told me, 'No, no, Gilles, this can come to no good.' " In time, Adolf Hitler's army psychiatrists sent Gilles back to the safety of civilian life, but for the painter the talking blackbird had been as real as the barking sergeant...
...language turned more sober and more exact, his vision faded; there is no poem in the final five volumes of his work that states the workings of the metaphysical-symbolic eye so well as "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," a poem from his first collection...
Icicles fitted the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause...