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.

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