Four Creatures

The Hare

You came to be so restless
Running errands for the moon

In circles over the earth
With barely place to reside.

She made you of the copper
Of her rising in the heat,

Of dim tin, obscured by cloud,
Of her silver apogee.

She founded bronze to outlast
The summer’s grass you press down.

Rarely has thought been so quick
On its feet, or been so far.

She filled you to the ear-tips,
To the white bunt with desire.

Started from among the tufts
And gone as the vaned seed blows,

She charged you with her charmed ring
That turns me to a suitor.

 

The Hind

The sunshine falls to pieces
Like a sheaf of palimpsests,

Sonnets on erased sonnets
All to your praise, like the sun’s

Unrepeating days rerhymed.
Sooner than let you be read

Openly by unversed eyes,
The sunlight fell to pieces.

Scraps of the generations’
Honeyed lines drifted round you.

Through groves no axe has bitten,
In such metaphor’s thicket

As a Shakespeare scarpered from
For bagging an Avon haunch,

Woods turn their back not to know
Your pursued beauty goes by.

So not to betray your trace,
The air has folded itself

Among ferns and played asleep.
When you put up a bough-like

Leg in brambles and brashing
They bow from the track uncracked.

Abetting to save and hide
You that the world’s dogs bay for.

 

The Hedgehog

With the dusk stuck on her back
Like a giant blue apple,

Earth strolled along the deep path.
Heaven was underneath her

With its humid choir of worms
And the bones of an apple

Shone in the throat of a tree.
Despite the weight of the world

That she rolled, dense little cog,
She could still smile her one smile

Which fed her winter and rose,
Beetling, from exhausted leaves

Not exhausted. That day frost
Relaxed. Its pins through the skin

Of things had broken their fall
Into bits that went their way.

The ball coiled, evolving spines.
She examined the grub-screws

And wing-nuts. The spring worked free
Where goodness had oiled the core.

One thing she knew very well;
Also, which way the wind blew.

 

The Vixen

She has not the form of loss
For once, for ever, but walks

Straight out from among the trees,
And her hair red as evening

Against the white of her cheek,
Against the ashes of air.

Her young are among the oaks,
Calling in their high voices.

She has brought them quick and sound
To the edge of this winter.

The edges of the young oaks
Rust, and her faith has not failed.

It was stronger than iron
Or blood, the look she gave you,

And not about to falter.
The evening that was coming

Was to be her possession.
She would be walking in it

As definitely as grace
And steadfastly as honour.

by John Gibbens

 

Go to the Trading Post to buy Four Creatures

 

Back to the present