"Voices of the Air" by Katherine Mansfield

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March 13, 2022 

Voices of the Air

Katherine Mansfield

But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.

The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats—

The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these—

For these little voices: the bee, the fly,
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Voices of the Air” appeared in Poems (Constable & Co. Ltd, 1923).

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp was a New Zealander poet, essayist, short story writer, and journalist from the Modernist movement. She was the author of many collections, including Bliss (Alfred A. Knopf, 1920), The Garden Party (Alfred A. Knopf, 1922), and Poems (Constable & Co. Ltd, 1923). She died on January 9, 1923.

Poems
(Constable & Co. Ltd, 1923)

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Thanks to Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum: Poems (Knopf, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Listen to a Q&A about Shaughnessy’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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