One Bird, One Star, One Flash
The poem opens with examples of the act of creation which deserve praise. They may come as a surprise to some readers. Not the strangeness of ostriches, not a galaxy, not the fearfully beautiful symmetry of a tiger’s stripes, but just one bird, just one star, just flash in a tiger’s eye. These are symbolic of all the little miracles of creation we overlook every minute of every hour of every day.
Phases of the Moon
On October 20, 2161, the moon will be in a waxing crescent phase. This is known and it is not subject to change short of a truly cosmic one-in-a-billion astronomical event. The speaker situates the immutable fact that—for the time being at least—“the moon sometimes cut thinly” as demonstrable symbolic evidence that order exists in the universe.
Testifying to Order
The observation and assertion that the bird, star and flash in a tiger’s are a testament to order is not some vague concept about order. It is a direct assumption that a higher being exists which is responsible. The testament to order is a symbolic demand of the reader to understand and accept the existence of God.
The Tiger’s Skin
Line 9 offers a rather strange bit of imagery in which tiger’s skin is said to be a cage. If one were to completely shave a tiger of its fur, it would actually look no different from a distance because the stripe patterns remain on its skin. The cage imagery thus becomes a symbolic species-changing repurposing of the proverbial saying about a leopard's lack of capacity to alter its spots. A tiger is what a tiger and there is nothing he can do to change. Nor can a bird or a star or a poet. God has created everything to remain what it was intended to be.
Man’s Mind Ajar
The poem is a celebration of the perfect order of God’s created universe. But the universe is clearly not in perfect order. Chaos is thus attributed not to God, but to man because his was created by God to include free will and open mind. Which, of course, inevitably leads to disorder.
