Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
(The rudiments of tropics are around,
Aloe of ivory, pear of rusty rind.)
His lids are white because his eyes are blind.
He is not paradise of parakeets,
Of his gold ether, golden alguazil,
Except because he broods there and is still.
Panache upon panache, his tails deploy
Upward and outward, in green-vented forms,
His tip a drop of water full of storms.
But though the turbulent tinges undulate
As his pure intellect applies its laws,
He moves not on his coppery, keen claws.
He munches a dry shell while he exerts
His will, yet never ceases, perfect cock,
To flare, in the sun-pallor of his rock.
The extended metaphor of one parakeet above other parakeets is
a great example of how Stevens uses sly whimsy to insinuate new perspectives on
very serious topics. The serious topic at hand is how certain people have power
over other people’s thoughts (and actions).
Deadpan humor abounds, starting with the matter-of-fact
comparison of parakeets’ nonsensical chatter with humanity’s collective thoughts.
Stevens exaggerates the comparison by employing highly sophisticated diction to
evoke the seemingly commonplace behaviors of the parakeets (including a comic stage
direction aside about the over-the-top tropical décor “rudiments” that could be
found to visualize such a scene). The poem’s odd but effective rhymes (alguazil
– a ministerial official – with still, cock with rock) further tune its satiric
pitch.
Make no mistake, however, the actual ideas that peek through
this pet store window are deadly serious. The major parakeet, for one, is the
only one who is alive. He is the "pip (a single blossom of a clustered head of flowers) of life," while the tails of his followers (an apt metaphor) are
described as a “mort”, which means primarily “dead” but can also be used, as
here, to denote “a great quantity.”
Parakeet number one is further described in the second
stanza as “blind,” indicating that the purity and vision expressed in his white
eyes (or “lids”, suggesting in addition maybe a hat of authority) is simply to
disguise that he lacks vision.
He is “not [the] paradise” the other parakeets seek, in fact
he doesn’t even move. He simply “flares” in reflection of the sun, connoting here
that his presence moves ever outward to assert more power over other parakeets.
In the fourth stanza, “panache” is used in its secondary
meaning of “abundance of feathers” to indicate “his tails” (the birds under his
control) flick their wings crazily as if to slough off large quantities of rain.
Yet he the master is no more than one “drop of [rain] water.” The power of
implication is a … powerful thing.
The word “tinges,” used in the sense of colors or fragments
of colors, provides a nice visual for the beauty created as these birds are
excited, just as the head parakeet’s “pure intellect applies its laws” suggests
a harmonious order to the proceedings, an alignment with divine order. This is
reinforced by the head bird managing to conjure this effect while remaining
completely still. But any release from the ominousness created by the rest of
the poem is clipped by three words: “coppery, keen claws.” As Robert Bly wrote,
“the teeth mother naked at last.”
Our messianic parakeet, as if to reinforce through banality
his evil nature, finally (in an abrupt break from the stillness that had been
depicted) “munches a dry shell while he / Exerts his will.” This suggests he
has nothing to offer his flock but desiccated husks of ideas – ones that he,
not they, consume. (“Dry shells” could also be read as a pointed reference to
T.S. Eliot and his Wasteland, but it’s impossible to say whether that would be
meant as homage or derision).
The overall effect calls to mind religious demagogues, then
as now a danger to society because they propose an alternative society
dedicated not to the common good but to themselves. Certain words and phrases enhance
this implication: “parakeet of parakeets” like the biblical “king of kings,”
blindness as spiritual insight, suggestions one is nothing more than a drop of
a water in the vast ocean, “paradise”, and the “rock” this parakeet messiah
stands upon.
Nevertheless, the metaphor is flexible (nonsensical?) enough
to apply to any power dynamic one would care to name where human authority is
vested in the thoughts of one person. This could even include, Plato forbid,
poets.
I await a rich offering of interpretations that draw from
the seemingly endless possibilities but, as I do not have the kind of influence
to make any tails wag at my command, I don’t expect any takers. In that can be
found a blessing many have fought for, and died to achieve: the independence of
human thought.
