(Read by Gallagher in a video to the right - starts around 3:00)
1 I found the hummingbird
clutched in torpor
to the feeder on the day
my student from long ago
5 appeared. I sent him into
the house and tried to
warm it, lifting my blouse
and caching it—(as I'd heard
South American women do)
10 under a breast.
It didn't stir, but I held it there
like a dead star for awhile
inside my heart-socket
to make sure, remembering the story
15 of a mother in Guatemala
whose baby had died
far from home. She pretended
it was living, holding it
to her breast the long way
20 back on the bus, so no one
would take it from her before
she had to give it over.
When the others on the journey
looked across the aisle
25 they saw only a mother and
her sleeping child, so tenderly
did she hold the swaddled form.
Miles and miles we flew
until I knew what that breast
30 was for when the form
of your not-there arrived. We
were impenetrably together
then, as that mother and child
must have been, reaching home at last,
35 her child having been kept alive
an extra while by the tender glances
of strangers.
Inside, my student and I found
a small cedarbox
40
painted onto its glass lid.
I told him of the dead
hummingbirds people saved
in their freezers because
45 they found them too beautiful
to bury. We made a small mausoleum
for Sah Sin under the sign
of the salmon, so the spear of her beak
could soar over death a while longer.
50 Next we propped the box
on the window ledge
facing out toward the mountains.
Then we went on about
our visit. My student
55 had become famous in the East
for his poems. Now he was
a little bored with being
a poet. He asked some questions
about what I might be
60 writing—courteously, as one
inquires about someone
not considered for a while.
I made a pot of tea
and served it in the maroon cups
65 the size of ducks' eggs
so it would take
a long while to drink. Fame.
It was so good to sit
with him. He seemed
70 to have miraculously survived
every hazard to make his way
72 to my house again.
It didn't stir, but I held it there
like a dead star for awhile
inside my heart-socket
to make sure, remembering the story
15 of a mother in Guatemala
whose baby had died
far from home. She pretended
it was living, holding it
to her breast the long way
20 back on the bus, so no one
would take it from her before
she had to give it over.
When the others on the journey
looked across the aisle
25 they saw only a mother and
her sleeping child, so tenderly
did she hold the swaddled form.
Miles and miles we flew
until I knew what that breast
30 was for when the form
of your not-there arrived. We
were impenetrably together
then, as that mother and child
must have been, reaching home at last,
35 her child having been kept alive
an extra while by the tender glances
of strangers.
Inside, my student and I found
a small cedar
40
painted onto its glass lid.
I told him of the dead
hummingbirds people saved
in their freezers because
45 they found them too beautiful
to bury. We made a small mausoleum
for Sah Sin under the sign
of the salmon, so the spear of her beak
could soar over death a while longer.
50 Next we propped the box
on the window ledge
facing out toward the mountains.
Then we went on about
our visit. My student
55 had become famous in the East
for his poems. Now he was
a little bored with being
a poet. He asked some questions
about what I might be
60 writing—courteously, as one
inquires about someone
not considered for a while.
I made a pot of tea
and served it in the maroon cups
65 the size of ducks' eggs
so it would take
a long while to drink. Fame.
It was so good to sit
with him. He seemed
70 to have miraculously survived
every hazard to make his way
72 to my house again.
If you are curious about the hummingbirds and torpor, there are two videos under the one of Gallagher reading Sah Sin that show what happens when a hummingbird enters torpor. She also explains in the audio video that her husband, Raymond Carver, used to call her “hummingbird”, which makes you look at the poem in a different light.
I thought that this poem reads even more like a story than her others that I’ve read, maybe because it’s much longer as well. Although I didn’t connect as well with this one, I still found it very intriguing. I thought it was interesting how she talked about her former student visiting her and saying that he was a bit bored being a poet (lines 56-58). The other touching story in the second and third stanza about the mother in Guatemala
Literary Devices –
Syntax: the order of words
- I thought the last few lines of the second and third stanza had interesting syntax that drew attention to the child. Perhaps it’s hinting at the idea of keeping someone’s memory alive.
Metaphor: a comparison that does not use the words “like” or “as”
- Gallagher compares the teacups to duck eggs (lines 64-65) to describe how small the cups are. She seems to do that on purpose so that her student would have to stay longer to talk with her.
Tone: the implied attitude of the speaker towards a subject
- In line 67, Gallagher had written “Fame.” which just seems to drip with sarcasm. Earlier on, her student had expressed his boredom of being a poet, so perhaps this comment is meant to address the student’s implied desire to become more well-known.
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