Poetry Daily: Eamon Grennan, "A Thrush by Utamaro"

Although it looks the picture of perfect balance, and although I'd imagined nothing could be steadier (yellow legs stapled to the softer yellow of a bamboo stake) and envied its way, at once solid and light, of being in the world, in fact the bird is only in the picture for its name – komedori – which means to be unbearably troubled. But then I see that what I was really admiring is the way its tenacious grip on things is sustained in spite of how the world of broken stake and bursting chrysanthemum blossom is going to bits around it, its unbearable trouble being borne and lived inside as the creature must live inside its own name, remaining upright against the odds and holding on to the long bamboo as though it were a flute, whose music might match the thrush's own woodnotes, songs raised over wreckage when the momentary dust has settled.