Week #6--Sign Inventory

The White Doves of Mazar
        for Nabilia
by Timothy McBride (posted on versedaily.org on 2/19/11)

For crusts of bread
these sacred birds entrust
their bodies to your hands
despite the evidence of blood
in every street
and twenty-seven years of war.
Though nothing will change
for the Hazaras and Uzbeks,
the Pashtuns and Tajiks,
the Arabs, Russians, and Americans
try nonetheless to feel
the slight heartbeat
against your palms. Touch
the ruffed head
and trembling wings—
helpless now and beautiful—
as if they were the framed,
unfinished faces of the dead.

The poem’s tone is tragic and mournful, also religious intonations occur in
“crusts of bread” and “sacred.”

Rhymes of “crust” and “entrust,” in lines one and two. “ruffed” in line 14 shares assonance with “Touch” in line 13.

Only one end rhyme of “head” in line 14 with “dead” in line 18.

The ethnic names provide a sense of place and time and challenge the tongue, while “nonetheless,” which follows them, rolls off the tongue smoothly.

“blood in every street” in lines 4 and 5 delivers vivid imagery of war-torn cities.

In lines 17 and 18, “framed, unfinished faces” could disguise another meaning of “unframed, finished faces.”

the lack of comma after “Americans” in line makes the subject of the sentence ambiguous.

The contemporary structure of the poem and its enjambment assert that nothing changes for the speaker in his chosen mode of expression, just as nothing changes for the people at war.