The bird symbolizes citizens are seen as very hardworking waking up very early in the morning yet their wants are unanswered. Li young lee in his books of poem makes it clear how the birds are undergoing hard life in the city yet they have no one to hear them. Citizens go through very difficult moments while finding the day to day wants yet they go out unhappy. They remember at times when life was good but now they are undergoing so many problems yet they don’t get any help.
“The city in which I loved you” is a Lees message about a birds story and the hard times it undergoes in life. The poet uses his recurring image of the struggling bird to eradicate the nature of life in the city in which I loved most. It goes through hard times of strong rain and couch fire finding someone. In the Lees poem in the city in which I loved you, the bird is seen struggling in life for instances, a bruise, blue in the muscle.
The birds go tired; impinge muscle and aches while it reaches home. The bird meets very unpleasant returns even after it goes through all the struggles. It remembers the bad flavor and vein in its necks when it is being eaten. It may have chore under its feathers, unfriendly sisters, and tears under its face yet no one could know it. “I might run with wife and children to the docks to bribe an officer for our lives and perilous passage.” (pg 1)
At times its feathers go very long, moistly blood, unpleasant ways which make it no one to hear it when it needs help. The birds lack interests due to fissured edifices and fractured edifices making its name unpleasant yet it maintains will follow the destroyer. It maintains that despite the uncountable fire, destroying its beauty, folding it so many times it will still achieve the one who destroyed it. In the city, no one sympathizes with it during hard times.
No one encourages it, helps it secretly, find humming in its ribs, or also helps it with funds for day to day activities. Those who are ok continue moving on with their businesses as it continues with its hard life. Due to exhaustion, its sleep is destroyed; it loses appetite inside the bus station. It is rained outside since its hatches were destroyed by strong rain, wires, and branches. It moves to the bus station where guns would go off, food lacks, poor sleeping habits.
The speaker view of its life is being unstable, unhelpful and with no need in the city. According to Lee the in his poem ‘in the city in which I love you’ eludes it how the speaker who is the bird moves to the mining place looking for a more peaceful and resourceful place yet in vein. He saws a woman squatting in the other street fun with handkerchief flies from his face. Lee implies that he has no hopes at a point from this city.
The bird passes very difficult issues of a man in the street taking cigarettes and those in the prisons playing checkers with some knocked teeth but it encourages itself that it is not the one. After some time, the rain stopped and the only sound that could be heard was from the flapping bird. There was hope now in the National Banks as a flag of the republic and other gallops like water tears itself away. The bird can now feel the night moving to disclosures or crescendos.
The bird insisted that can now feel the night and some of the mere life changed. But it’s from the prayer that the birds’ life was changed. At the branches, it made nests of raw mouths very spaced. It could have no hunger anymore. Like the sea, it was recommended by its kinds with their voices, quarrelsome with their aliases.
In the morning in the city, vacant for the bird arises pages and windows flare even when it was not there. Someone could now sweep away his portion of side work and wakens the drunk yet the bird is gone. “Soldiers sweep the street for my father.” (pg 3) The bird is expecting the woman despite having so many difficulties to have no hope but the woman is seen with a great effort. He is expecting her to sit up a minute and laugh out loud as life has changed positively.
He seems unaware of his body size, age, height, and even weight due to so many difficulties he is passing in life. The man who was kicked, the woman who was slapped, and those who did survive no one is in him. The bird compares itself with brick walls in the space and says they are not wider than its face.
While in the city, the birds pass so many difficulties, the gun goes off, jams in all passageways and pie plate spins past whizzing its thin problems. “I thought even the dooryard rose touched by wind trembling in anticipation of first petal fall.” (pg 4) In the other city there no peace nor any advantage. A woman is seen squatting in the street with his child beside her. Flies are all over her face with a handkerchief. In this city, everyone is seen as having difficulties in day to day life. Birds have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, and also citizens are seen struggling day in day out.
The birds’ life changes at a point in that it can now eat, sleep and move freely in the city. The prayers and others attitude changes however it may get used in the barb which refers to it as a world where some pains are always normal. The bird could now afford to build but to whom? In the city, Lees words “every day was now a day to work and to get money”. The bird emphasizes that one is not the wind which someone notes are at the margin meaning there were not that important.
Lee brings in the cases of it dead parents late in the century bearing the mark of one who experienced. It gives out its birth story and says that its birthplace disappeared and its citizenship earned from stones of the earth thus was no more to be a citizen of the city.
It emphasizes that without citizenship it is not restricted by law, he enters without restricting or help from the history, it enters any day he wants to enter and any time he wants to enter. It concludes by bringing out the way he loved the city and could not believe that the multitude of his dreams and many words were in vain and were only in vein.
The poem ends by giving us the miserly story of the birds and its story from the city in which he loved. In addition, it gives the story of the bird and the difficult life it goes through in the city until it gets to a more stable life. It is seen passing through very hard times in order to sustain everyday needs.
The instances of hard struggles ends at some time due to persistence. Lee has established the instances of making it in future yet admittedly acknowledges that it is more often fails him than it saves him in life. In addition, he relates back to his upbringing his moments with the nature where memories persistence has elude itself as the most important quality and skills.
In conclusion, the birds in the city symbolize the citizens in the city that undergoes difficult times in the city for day to day wants. All the hard times such as: unable to get daily food, shelter, and clothes.