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Pinksy's poem "From the Childhood of Jesus"
(see Appendix B for complete poem) (Pinsky, Robert. The
Figured Wheel. New York: The Noonday Press, 1996, pp. 41-42.) begins with birds.
Twelve sparrows are modeled out of river clay by Jesus as a child. They
are not molded, the typical action for making things out of clay, but modeled, set up
as a representation for the possibility of more, the first in a mass of sparrows,
presumably all like these first ones, "modeled" after them. The poem ends with "The twelve new sparrows flew aimlessly through the night, / Not blinking or resting, as if never to alight." These birds just do, without having any purpose; they do not blink, a living necessity, or rest, seeming to not have the notion that they could stop flying. These sparrows are machines--they don't think or have intent, hunger, or exhaustion. Created by "the Son / of Man" (not God, because man is definitely a living creature, while there is debate about God), these sparrows may very will be the first computers. The first and last stanza, in which the birds are made and fly aimlessly, are rhyming couplets, while the rest of the couplets in the poem are unrhymed. This small fact points agian to the the mechanics of a bird, this time in song. |
