The Warm and the Cold

 Freezing dusk is closing
 Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
 That can no longer feel.

 But the carp is in its depth
 Like a planet in its heaven.

 And the badger in its bedding
 Like a loaf in the oven.

 And the butterfly in its mummy
 Like a viol in its case.

 And the owl in its feathers
 Like a doll in its lace.
 

Freezing dusk has tightened
 Like a nut screwed tight
On the starry aeroplane
 Of the soaring night.

 But the trout is in its hole
 Like a chuckle in a sleeper.

 The hare strays down the highway
 Like a root going deeper.

 The snail is dry in the outhouse
 Like a seed in a sunflower.

 The owl is pale on the gatepost
 Like a clock on its tower.
 

Moonlight freezes the shaggy world
 Like a mammoth of ice - 
The past and the future
 Are the jaws of a steel vice.

 But the cod is in the tide-rip
 Like a key in a purse.

 The deer are on the bare-blown hill
 Like smiles on a nurse.

 The flies are behind the plaster
 Like the lost score of a jig.

 Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
 Like money in a pig.
 

Such a frost
 The flimsy moon
 Has lost her wits.
 

 A star falls.
 

The sweating farmers
 Turn in their sleep
 Like oxen on spits.

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...