Viv - Now hear DH Lawrence's Kangaroo: a relaxed, meditative poem, organic,
and as musical as it is visually stimulating.
Verse 7 on:
Delicate mother Kangaroo
Sitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,
And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more
gently and finely-lined than a rabbit's, or than a hare's,
Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop,
which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.
Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.
Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,
So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many
empty dawns in silent Australia.
Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders,
And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale belly
With a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle
of a long thin ear, like ribbon,
Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little
dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.
Her belly, her big haunches
And in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.
There, she shan't have any more peppermint drops.
So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns,
goes off in slow, sad leaps
On the long flat skis of her legs,
Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.
QUOTE ENDS.
That is some of the poem which sits on pages 177 - 179 of the Penguin
SELCTED POEMS, edited by Keith Sagar (this selection first published
Harmondsworth, 1972). Certainly there are some less-than-great poems, like
his rhyming late poems -
>From Conundrums (Pg. 211):
Tell me a thing
that you've often seen,
yet if put in a book
it makes you turn green!
But let him/her without a bad poem be the first to cast a stone.
Lawrence's animal poems are wondrous and muscular, with a witty eye and a
good ear - just like the Panther poem by Rilke you introduced me to when we
were teenagers living on this West Coast of Australia. For those alone he
is measured with the great poets-writing-in-English in the 20th century.
QED.
Andrew
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Andrew Burke Copywriting
[log in to unmask] Creative Writing
http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
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