'The Poetry of Animals' poetry booklet - PDF Flipbook

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The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919.

The Collar-bone of a Hare

by W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

WOULD I could cast a sail on the water
Where many a king has gone
And many a king’s daughter,
And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,
The playing upon pipes and the dancing,
And learn that the best thing is
To change my loves while dancing
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.

I would find by the edge of that water
The collar-bone of a hare
Worn thin by the lapping of water,
And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare
At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,
And laugh over the untroubled water
At all who marry in churches,
Through the white thin bone of a hare.

The Cat and the Moon

by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

The Cat and the Sea

by R. S. Thomas (1913-2000)

It is a matter of a black cat
On a bare cliff top in March
Whose eyes anticipate
The gorse petals;
The formal equation of
A domestic purr
With the cold interiors
Of the sea's mirror.

This was a summer’s day – must do another in March…

The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver (1935 - )

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Two legends

from ‘Crow: From the life and Songs of the Crow’

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

I

Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into the light
Black the nerves, black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun.

II

Black is the wet otter’s head, lifted.
Black is the rock, plunging in foam.
Black is the gall lying on the bed of the blood.

Black is the earth-globe, one inch under,
An egg of blackness
Where sun and moon alternate their weathers

To hatch a crow, a black rainbow
Bent in emptiness
over emptiness

But flying.

The Flea

By John Donne (1572 – 1631)

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
Confesse it, this cannot be said
A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

Though use make thee apt to kill me,
Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.

Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
In what could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;

'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.

Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979)

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,

the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons

frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c.1599)

Hamlet’s response to Horatio, Act V, scII

Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

HAMLET: There’s a special providence in the fall

of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it

will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all:

since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave

betimes? Let be.

The Poet and the Woodlouse

by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

Said a poet to a woodlouse —‘Thou art certainly my brother;
I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole;
And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother,
In the colours shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul.

‘Yea,’ the poet said, ‘I smell thee by some passive divination,
I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house;
What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion,
Had the aons thought of making thee a man, and me a louse.

‘The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion,
Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test;
Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question,
And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best.

‘Man, the fleshly marvel, alway feels a certain kind of awe stick
To the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight:
Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic,
On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate.’

‘Notwithstanding which, O poet,’ spake the woodlouse, very blandly,
‘I am likewise the created,—I the equipoise of thee;
I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lie
The inane of measured ages that were embryos of me.

‘I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences,
And the air I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush:
Ripest-budded odours blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,
And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush.

‘I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings,
Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee:
And earth’s soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs,
Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.

‘And I sacrifice, a Levite—and I palpitate, a poet;—
Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things?
Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of the heroic;
Earth’s worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? look! approve me! I have
wings.

‘Ah, men’s poets! men’s conventions crust you round and swathe you mist-
like,
And the world’s wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod:
We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the Christlight,
And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells sweet to God.

‘For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles,
Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms,
Shimmers up the non-existent round the churning feet of angels;
And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms.

‘Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us;
Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong?
For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,
Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song.

‘Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion
See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;
Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,
Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger- smelling chrism.

‘Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,
Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;
All eternities hang round him like an old man’s clothes collapsed,
While he makes his mundane music—AND HE WILL NOT STOP, I THINK.’

The Poet and The Woodlouse

The story of the sailor James Bartley, swallowed by a whale in 1891 during an
expedition off the Falkland Islands. Over a day later he was discovered by his
fellow sailors in the stomach of the whale, doubled up and unconscious.

‘His skin, where it was exposed to the action of the gastric juices, underwent a
striking change. His face and hands were bleached to a deadly whiteness.’

I was interested in the idea of the bleached white of his body and, traditionally,
candles being made from spermaceti, 'an oil from a cavity in the head of the
sperm whale which produces a significantly brighter light'.

James Bartley was blind for the rest of his life, but apparently returned to
being a cobbler, dying peacefully in his bed in 1909.

His tombstone in Gloucester is inscribed ‘James Bartley- a modern day Jonah’.

Examination at the Womb-Door

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns these questionable brains? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.

Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.

Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.

But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently.

Pass, Crow.

Crow Goes Hunting

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

Crow
Decided to try words.

He imagined some words for the job, a lovely pack-
Clear-eyed, resounding, well-trained,
With strong teeth.
You could not find a better bred lot.

He pointed out the hare and away went the words
Resounding.
Crow was Crow without fail, but what is a hare?

It converted itself to a concrete bunker.
The words circled protesting, resounding.

Crow turned the words into bombs-they blasted the bunker.
The bits of bunker flew up-a flock of starlings.

Crow turned the words into shotguns, they shot down the starlings.
The falling starlings turned to a cloudburst.

Crow turned the words into a reservoir, collecting the water.
The water turned into an earthquake, swallowing the reservoir.

The earthquake turned into a hare and leaped for the hill
Having eaten Crow's words.

Crow gazed after the bounding hare
Speechless with admiration.

Dawn's Rose

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

Is melting an old frost moon.

Agony under agony, the quiet of dust,
And a crow talking to stony skylines.

Desolate is the crow's puckered cry
As an old woman's mouth
When the eyelids have finished
And the hills continue.

A cry
Wordless
As the newborn baby's grieving
On the steely scales.

As the dull gunshot and its after-râle
Among conifers, in rainy twilight.

Or the suddenly dropped, heavily dropped
Star of blood on the fat leaf.

Glimpse

by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
'О leaves,' Crow sang, trembling, 'O leaves –'
The touch of a leaf's edge at his throat
Guillotined further comment.

Nevertheless
Speechless he continued to stare at the leaves
Through the god's head instantly substituted.

Inspired by Leonard Baskin



from The Donkey

by G.K Chesterton (1874 -1936)
When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

Brobdingnagian Sheep and Lilliputian sheep

….from Brobdingnag and Lilliput, the imaginary countries of giants and tiny
people in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726)

When the sailing ship Adventure is blown off course by storms and forced to
sail for land in search of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions
and found by a farmer who is 72 feet (22 m) tall (the scale of Brobdingnag is

about 12:1, compared to Lilliput's 1:12, judging from Gulliver estimating a
man's step being 10 yards (9.1 m)).

Ginger

by Jake Scotney (aged 9)

Ginger is a kitten
Better than all the rest.
He knows his name
and comes at the call.

Great, grand, glamorous Ginger
He
thinks
he’s
a
lion.
He’s very amusing.
But don’t go too close
He’ll bite or claw if he’s in a bad mood.

Ginger is warm,
his gingery coat
warming him up.

He rules whilst the waves crash into the sunburnt rocks.
He runs into walls ‘Crash’
he’s crazy.

His meow is so cute.
‘Meeeeoow’

Ginger dances around.
Ginger smells perfect.

Under the lily shadow

by F. S. Flint (1885-1960)

Under the lily shadow
And the gold
And the blue and mauve
That the whin and the lilac
Pour down on the water,
The fishes quiver.

Over the green cold leaves
And the rippled silver
And the tarnished copper
Of its neck and beak,
Toward the deep black water
Beneath the arches,
The swan floats slowly.

Into the dark of the arch the swan floats
And the black depth of my sorrow
Bears a white rose of flame.

Quotations by Richard Adams (1920 - ) in Watership Down

‘A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the
end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward
dying.’

‘Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is
certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of
their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain
quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or
indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an
intuitive feeling that Life is Now.

A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the
grass.’

‘Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.’

‘Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow
through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to
begin.’

Bee! I'm expecting you!

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due—

The Frogs got Home last Week—
Are settled, and at work—
Birds, mostly back—
The Clover warm and thick—

You'll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me—
Yours, Fly.

Fame is a bee

Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.