A family gather around a bed to sing a lament to their own deaths, accompanied by a blackbird.

In a bedroom, perched on the edge of an unmade bed, a man looks out of a window at the falling snow. A blackbird settles on the windowsill and strikes up a song which comes to form a melody over which the man begins to sing of the murders of his wife and two little children. One by one, his son and daughter appear, and his wife turns, each sings a verse of their own. The man then tells of his own suicide. Finally, the blackbird flies away and the man returns to gazing out of the window.