We box their canyons
and fence their meadows,
the noose flies
we strap steel to their legs.
On their backs
you’ll feel the mountains,
in their gait
the endless plains
And we sigh
when their hearts burst
as they fall in a tangle of limbs.
But the only thing better
is to watch them waste
tied in corrals
until their trot trembles
and breaks.
We share their sadness
hiding it away,
then go out to find another.
One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
from Philip Massinger by T.S. Eliot Original Essay
Found via Daring Fireball and Brian Ericford and Nancy Prager.
At my ankles
bloated beasts
drift on tides,
dreaming. I stalk
the waking
luminence lurking
near them,
among the reeds,
amidst the mud
of this fresh
water reef.An absolutely brilliant poem, concise, clear, powerfully compact. The alliteration on lines two and six are particularly hard-hitting,…
Feste's Lute 