An excursion into my notebook around the time I wrote this poem, or indeed at any time, will give you an idea of what I was trying to achieve with this poem. I'm attracted to those poets that I call, to use a term that was offered tentatively to me by a teacher, the 'surreal lyricists': in America, James Wright, John Haines, Charles Wright, Charles Simic; in South America, Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda; in Europe, Tomas Tranströmer, Georg Trakl, Yehuda Amichai. The list is more extensive than this. They are the poets, to my mind, who have taken the best of the two strongest movements in twentieth century poetry; lyricism, without its narcissistic navel-gazing; surrealism, without its obtuseness. The natural world, to these poets, becomes infused and deepened by the imagination, an act that Simic feels is the most philosophical for the modern poet. And the surreal images conjured in these poets' minds are as familiar to us as our dreams and jokes; again, Simic has said that nobody laughs at a large shoe in a bird cage, but a large egg…

          While at college I began collecting images from these poems like stamps, and it was natural, in fact necessary, that I start imitating their moves. Let me share a few specimens with you: "The sky puts on the darkening blue coat / held for it by a row of ancient trees" (Rilke 'Evening'); "The keyholes are like small delicate wounds / through which all the blood has oozed out" (Amichai 'I passed a house'); "I have an examination in the University of Forgetfulness and am as emptyhanded as the shirt on the clothesline" (Tranströmer 'Madrigal'). There is a deep sense of humanity in images such as these. I also think they can stand on their own outside their poems because of the immense energy that rests in them. Yes, they can be silly, because surrealism is often silly, but they are also wise, and the greatest wisdom is seldom dour: suddenly I have an image in my head to illustrate this last idea, one that's part of pop culture now, of Einstein with his tongue sticking out!

          As I read many of these surreal lyrics in translation, I find myself often writing lines that feel as though they've been translated. Surreal lyrics are often declarative, but I wonder if a certain awkwardness makes it into a translation, like a virus being transfused along with blood. Nevertheless, I like the awkwardness, because it feels like a style, something to achieve, but the American poets ought to continue to be the models in this aspect of my writing: "The sad bones of my hands descend into a valley / of strange rocks". That last line is from James Wright, a poem called 'Rain'; a former teacher who knew Wright told me he began writing his incredible short lyrics after translating European and Asian poets. However, the declarative style can sometimes seem too clumsy. As I re-read my poem now, I wonder if, in my desire to emulate, I may have gone too far.

          The garden where I found this dead bird, by the way, belongs to the teacher who knew Wright; his name is Neil Myers. After I graduated from Purdue University's MFA program, I did a little gardening for him, while he sat in his attic study writing his own poems, coming out every now and again with a cup of tea to drop bombshells on me, such as the story of the time Wright came into school one day (in Minnesota, where Neil then worked) to say "Hang it all, I'm going to William Duffy's farm." The rest, in this case literally, is history! When I heard stories like that, everything in Neil's specific little garden became eternal; I dedicate the poem to him.