The Malham Bird- Dannie Abse

The Malham Bird is a poem Abse wrote for his wife, with a key theme of forbidden love. The entire poem is extremely metaphorical and Abse links his love for Joan, as the title shows, to the story of the Mahlam Bird. This story is a Jewish legend about the garden of Eden, which  essentially states that "the Malham Bird of Eden did not eat of the forbidden fruit and so dwells alone in paradise"

Abse metaphorically compares his love for Joan to the eating of the forbidden fruit, forbidden but almost irresistible. In the final stanza Abse writes about how as the Malham bird resisted eating the fruit "it was not banished but stayed, lonely, immortal, forever" this makes us reconsider whether the bird was really rewarded at all, and is also a justification for taking risks and doing things that might be forbidden because you never know where your actions can take you, and even though the Malham bird supposedly did the right thing it was still left eternally lonely.