Vernon Watkins (1906-1957; see also weeks 96 and 450) was a modern symbolist, heavily influenced by W.B.Yeats, and I think it is fairly obvious that the heron in this poem is intended to represent the poet, doing his best to fix his attention on the transcendental as represented by light and water even while ‘calamity about him cries’. The ‘calamity’ in this case probably reflects the tumults of the last mid-century (the poem first appeared in a 1954 collection), though Watkins did have five children, and having had four myself I like to think it may also reflect the difficulties of trying to follow one’s poetic vocation in a household full of other people whose priorities in life are not necessarily the writing of poems.
Of course, Watkins was not the first to use a bird as the symbol for a poet. We have Robert Frost’s fine poem ‘The Oven Bird’ (see week 214), and then there is Baudelaire’s ‘L’Albatros’, that uses the albatross to characterise the poet, so graceful when aloft, so awkward and vulnerable when brought to earth. I think Baudelaire’s poem has the edge as far as a reality check goes in that it does not impose upon the bird anything not in its nature and behaviour, whereas in the case of the Watkins poem while we admittedly do not know what goes in the mind of a heron, I would guess that a rapt contemplation of light and water takes a back seat to wondering where the next fish is coming from. Still, Watkins’s poem has some beautiful touches – I particularly like ‘cloud-backed’ – and I think stands as one of his best.
The Heron
The cloud-backed heron will not move:
He stares into the stream.
He stands unfaltering while the gulls
And oyster-catchers scream.
He does not hear, he cannot see
The great white horses of the sea,
But fixes eyes on stillness
Below their flying team.
How long will he remain, how long
Have the grey woods been green?
The sky and the reflected sky,
Their glass he has not seen,
But silent as a speck of sand
Interpreting the sea and land,
His fall pulls down the fabric
Of all that windy scene.
Sailing with clouds and woods behind,
Pausing in leisured flight,
He stepped, alighting on a stone,
Dropped from the stars of night.
He stood there unconcerned with day,
Deaf to the tumult of the bay,
Watching a stone in water,
A fish’s hidden light.
Sharp rocks drive back the breaking waves,
Confusing sea with air.
Bundles of spray blown mountain-high
Have left the shingle bare.
A shipwrecked anchor wedged by rocks,
Loosed by the thundering equinox,
Divides the herded waters,
The stallion and his mare.
Yet no distraction breaks the watch
Of that time-killing bird.
He stands unmoving on the stone;
Since dawn he has not stirred.
Calamity about him cries,
But he has fixed his golden eyes
On water’s crooked tablet,
On light’s reflected word.
Vernon Watkins
David Sutton 