In that country the animals
have the faces of people:
the ceremonial
cats possessing the streets
the fox run
politely to earth, the huntsmen
standing around him, fixed
in their tapestry of manners
the bull, embroidered
with blood and given
an elegant death, trumpets, his name
stamped on him, heraldic brand
because
(when he rolled
on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth
in his blue mouth were human)
he is really a man
even the wolves, holding resonant
conversations in their
forests thickened with legend.
In this country the animals
have the faces of
animals.
Their eyes
flash once in car headlights
and are gone.
Their deaths are not elegant.
They have the faces of
no-one.
- Margaret Atwood
Leave it to Atwood to once again show us ourselves as she reminds us of other worlds. I'd been haunted - as have some of my students - not by the heroes in our myths, but by the "monsters" and the dead. Atwood reminds me that at least those characters held magic, and were imbued with a certain gravitas that today we do not often afford the creatures we encounter.
Offer us a poem out of your experience today, one you've create or one you admire. (Copy it into the comments and/or link to a post on your own site.)
MFB,
L
2 comments:
What a beautiful poem. I love the use of needlework allusions..."tapestry" and "embroidered". The images of animals disappearing out of our headlights. I'll have to try to think of a poem today and hop along.
That would be wonderful, Robyn. Your comment prompted me to reread the entire poem: how had I missed that detail? It makes me wonder if the country to which Atwood's referring is actually a prior time period rather than a place (or both). The more I read this poem, the more I see.
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