The poem 'What a Bird Thought'

Open your book, Poorvi, at page 86 and read the poem 'What a Bird Thought'. Read it aloud, or with a friend. Nobody knows who wrote it, so the book says 'Anonymous'.

The bird itself tells the poem, in four stanzas. It is about perspective: the way you see the world from where you are standing. Each time the bird moves, it sees more, and its idea of the world changes.

Stanza 1: the bird's first home is a little house, its egg, and it lives there very well. From inside, all it can see is the shell, so it thinks the whole world is small and round and made of pale blue shell. The main idea: the bird lived happily in a small world.

Stanza 2: next the bird lives in a little nest and needs nothing else. It thinks the world is made of straw, because its nest is made of straw, and it is nestled by its mother: snug, warm and comfortable beside her. The main idea: the bird lived in a cosy nest with its mother.

Stanza 3: one day the bird flutters out of the nest to see what it can find. Now it says the world is made of leaves, and that it has been 'very blind', because from inside the nest it could not see the leaves at all. The main idea: the bird steps out into the world.

Stanza 4: at last the bird flies beyond the tree. It is grown up now, fit for grown-up labours (the hard work of adult birds). And now it says it does not know how the world is made, and nor do its neighbours. The main idea: the bird flies away as an adult.

We are a little like the bird. A small child thinks home is the whole world; then school shows a bigger one, and later life a bigger one still. The more we see, the more we understand how much we do not know.