ANIMALS
by: Alfred Kreymborg (1883-1966)
- HAT animal
you are
- or whether you are
- an animal, I
- am too dumb to tell.
- Some moments,
- I feel you've come out of the earth,
- out of some cool white stone
- deep down in the earth.
- Or there brushes past
- and lurks in a corner
- the thought
- that you slipped from a tree
- when the earth stopped spinning,
- that a blue shell brought you
- when the sea tired waltzing.
- You might be a mouse,
- the dryad of a woodpecker,
- or a pure tiny fish dream;
- you might be something dropped from the sky,
- not a god-child--
- I wouldn't have you that--
- nor a cloud--
- though I love clouds.
- You're something not a bird,
- I can tell.
- If I could find you somewhere
- outside
- of me, I might tell--
- but inside?
"Animals" is reprinted
from The Masque of Poets. Ed. Edward J. O'Brien. New York:
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1918. |
MORE
POEMS BY ALFRED KREYMBORG |
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