It is impossible to say just what I mean But as if a magic lantern threw the thoughts in patterns on the scene, From the north and from the south and from the west The many birds flocking migrate One with another identical, the breast Of each like the others. Like their brains and feet. Trembling the pale skies vibrate With the earth-bound turning of the pages Of Birds of North America bound in leather More dark more old more new than that Binding The Tall Proud Wonder of the Cat. Hounding footprints near immemorial heather, The Elementality Of the raging weather, As such winds do, like angry mothers, Never turns another face; simply cages The wandering lost. As for this, It is like this, formulated thus, Among the little and more little proud things of doggerel, The sensate things that men create. But Forfeiting a forthcoming pun, from the West and from the North and from the south Names just as well the yawning mouth of the turbulent river as the direction In which birds gather to migrate.
And Children, Bright, reading less complicated books of natural history, Learn of Turdus this and the Great Horned that Before the annals of the cat. Little children At night, tend in groups to observe the stars With wonder communicated through held hands. Children In daylight, can easily be spotted By their little colored overcoats Making possible A mothers positive identification. While perpetually In its particular orbit, biding the eternal hour, Striding the ancestral path, turning back, going forth As from the west and the south and from the north Birds congregate with cries win the pale skies overhead, The lone leopard walks. Its skin is hunted. By the vulture on the carcass, It is interrogated. In the silence of the veldt The question forms itself as the heat of the day Which sits round the kill, grinning, Coming before and after: Will this child who strayed out of civilization Be eaten by a predator or by a scavenger? Regard its coat, the leopard answers turning, To the bird or o the heat it cannot know, And pronounce then what such skin attracts. The bird travels with decision on its back To the astonishment of the mighty mountains where, Cathayan, In droves, large cats perambulate Their breathing perambulating clocks and instruments Their footfalls measuring the space between skulls and time Their tails when they sit curling on the curled Rope, guide book, canteens and pelvic decoration. They know from the east Birds migrate over decent memories Of children playing in the wilderness.
Before and after To her footmen of varying loyalties Queen Victoria, who was never At any time Himalayan, said, Ah, my foes and oh, my friends, The laureate plays with words again. At another time, through the telescope She spied a star holding hands With its neighboring aura, regarding Her with wonder, wide-eyed. She was never to do the telescope Much afterwards, preferred on her lap To follow the score Of
Sir Arthur Sullivans Ruddigore. |