The themes of order and disorder, and man’s uneasy relationship with an indifferent natural force are thus introduced. Clarke alludes to nature’s indifference by telling us that the spring’s eye is “blind”, just as nature is blind to human interaction. The plants she names that are growing in the garden are “nettles and briars”, stinging, prickly weeds that humans find unpleasant, but nature is indifferent to this, and “fills” the garden with them nonetheless. In the last line of the first stanza, Clarke further emphasises how man is removed from nature by describing herself as she “wades forward” to cut the weeds. The use of the word “wade” portrays the poet struggling clumsily through the undergrowth, as if through water, ill at ease with being surrounded by nature’s force. The image of her moving forward, scythe in hand, also brings the reader back to the figure of the grim reaper, and prefigures the horror of the second stanza.
There is an impressionistic feel to the way Clarke portrays the images of how she has unwittingly destroyed a nest whilst scything. The use of the present tense and the succession of sensory and visual impressions communicate the immediacy of the horror, as if the reader is experiencing these moments with the poet. The short, terse, immediate sentences of the second stanza also reflect the chaos that ensues as humans attempt to bring order to nature, although stanzaic regularity is maintained. The blade of the scythe is sticky, as if it is bloody from a murder. Indeed, the poet has yolk, albumen and blood on her hands, a more forceful and explicit image of the killing. Yolk is the nutrient for the baby bird, and albumen protects the unborn animal in its egg, and the reader’s knowledge of this compounds the horror of the image. “Fragments of shell are baby-bones” is a powerful and emotive metaphor. It likens the broken shell of the egg with the broken bones of a baby, putting emphasis on our being witness to the death of a new life. The compound word “baby-bones” is shocking and distressing, and is made more emphatic by the alliterative repetition of the “b” sound. The delicate shell, and the image of albumen as a protective fluid all point to the heartbreaking fragility of new life, and to the ease with which it can be destroyed.
Clarke completes the stanza with further poignant images of the killing. Another metaphor describes the scythe with which she accidentally destroyed the nest as a “scalpel”: a clinical, surgical instrument that brings hospitals and order to the reader’s mind. Paradoxically, however, this “scalpel” has brought destruction and disorder into the willow warbler’s world, and so it is described accordingly as “bloodied and guilty”. This description, in conjunction with the previous image of crushed baby bones points to connotations of abortion, and the loss of a child. In this way, Clarke subtly connects the human world with the natural world. This link is further emphasised through Clarke’s mention of “cut cords”, an unambivalent allusion to a cut umbilical cord. Thus the willow warbler’s loss as a mother is associated with the loss by degrees a human parent has to endure, once the umbilical cord is cut, and her child grows up. The ultimate separation of mother and child is reflected in the fact that Dylan and the poet are already “hurting with a separate pain.” There is also a sad irony in the fact that the human mother’s loss is connected to her child growing up and making his own way in the world, whereas the willow warbler’s loss is a direct consequence of the actions of humans, and we know her chick will never grow to maturity. We notice how this controlling image, where the natural and human worlds fully connect, comes in the middle of the poem: it is quite literally the central theme of the piece. The reader is thus urged towards the dénouement in the final stanza.
The final stanza opens with the willow warbler dropping from “the crown of the hawthorn tree.” Significantly, Christ was crowned with a circlet of hawthorn, bringing connotations of suffering, sacrifice and anguish to the reader’s mind. The warbler “drops” down to the ground: a further subtle indication of unhappiness and forlornness. However, there is now a change in the relationship between man and nature. Both human mother and bird mother return to the scene of the killing, both wanting to find a reason for the loss. Clarke therefore forms an empathetic link between the human and natural worlds. The poet identifies with the bird’s feelings of loss, as she realises that she too will lose her son when he eventually grows to maturity. We notice how much more stillness and uneasy calm there is in this stanza compared with the previous one. The tone is more mournful, and the chaotic tumble of images has given way to quite reflection, with the poet’s silence perhaps also reflecting her feelings of guilt at what she has accidentally done. The poet still holds the pieces of the broken egg, as if she cannot reconcile herself to having ended a new life in spring, which, paradoxically, represents energy, birth, and hope. The warmth of the fluids in the egg reminds the poet of the warmth of human birth fluids, and the reader is brought back to the empathetic bonds of loss and motherhood between human and bird.
Chaos is destructive. Nature’s feral force fills the garden with weeds, and so destroys its order. The humans’ intrusion into the natural world in an attempt to restore order ultimately brings destruction to the warbler’s nest. Yet chaos also represents power, creative energy, and the life-force itself. The relationship between man and the natural world is an ambivalent one, with humans being part of this world, and yet often in conflict with it. An ordered world cannot tolerate the uncontrolled operation of such an incomprehensible power, and yet a too-ordered world, one that too successfully represses nature’s force, becomes sterile and meaningless. The fact that the warbler chick, symbol of new life and hope, has been sacrificed to the world of order, underscores this concept. There is, however, a final hint that nature and man can be reconciled: the poet identifies with the mother warbler’s loss, and reflects on her own role as a mother, nurturing her child only to have to endure his flight from the nest.
