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[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I humbly request recommendations for poems about animals. Any animal, any form. Thank you kindly, poetry people!

Comments

3 by the Late Great Ogden Nash

[orejen.livejournal.com]

The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat.

When called by a panther,
Don't anther.

You can have my jellyfish
I'm not sellyfish.

[mspixieears.livejournal.com]

I don't have it at hand, but 'Hawk Roosting' by Ted Hughes from Lupercal is one I'd recommend.

Then there is of course his 'The Thoughtfox'.

[mspixieears.livejournal.com]

whoops, and Sir Thomas Wyatt 'Whoso list to hunt'

[gracelessatthis.livejournal.com]

The one that springs to mind immediately...


D. H. Lawrence
Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Ode to the Cat, Pablo Neruda

[yarrowkat]

There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tails were too long, and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, flight.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:

Follow up:

born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows exactly what it wants.
Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes.
Nothing hangs together
quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon
have
such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its back,
which is both subtle and confident,
is like the curve of a sailing ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes
are the only
slot
for depositing the coins of night.
O little
emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass
in rough weather
and poise
four nimble paws
on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious
of all earthly things
(because everything
feels filthy
to the cat's immaculate paw),
you claim
the touch of love in the air.
O freelance household
beast, arrogant
vestige of night,
lazy, agile
and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police
of human chambers
and badge
of burnished velvet!
Surely there is nothing
enigmatic
in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery after all.
You're known to everyone, you belong
to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner, uncle
or companion
to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.
But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about cats.
I know everything else, including life and its archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of math.
I know the earth's volcanic protrusions
and the crocodile's unreal hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness
and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of gold.

[sophie-spence.livejournal.com]

The Wild Swans at Coole (http://www.bartleby.com/148/1.html) and The Cat and the Moon (http://www.poetry-archive.com/y/the_cat_and_the_moon.html) by W B Yeats
The Moose (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15213) and The Armadillo (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15214) by Elizabeth Bishop
The Little Lamb (http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/blake/songs_of_innocence/the_little_lamb/) and The Tyger (http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/blake/songs_of_experience/the_tyger/) by William Blake
The Animal Kingdom (http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0068) collection by Sri Chinmoy
Walking the Dog (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/walking-the-dog/) by Howard Nemerov
Whales Weep Not (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15350) by D H Lawrence

[sophie-spence.livejournal.com]

Oops, forgot Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/Summer97/SemGS/WebLex/OldPossum/oldpossumlex/) by T S Eliot

Red Fox on Highway 500 (near midnight)

[shibby-kiki.livejournal.com]

All I saw was the tail of him
the dream fox ahead of me
his rump a red light flashing
in a thousand movie still shots
(callipygous screenland special)
forty feet ahead of me
feet red hammers hammering light as air on the highway
running from death on the highway
he died or dreamed he did
--his tail a flat red poker
flung straight back toward me
his eyes overtaking the shadow
his tail bisecting the moonlight
he was fox fox fox

It was like a stage play
it was like my childhood nightmares
the guilt-ridden dreams of running
when all the adults chased me
but nobody ever caught me
it was like time had stopped for us
and never begins again
His shadow black as a monster
his shadow a soundless monster
stomping te dark ahead of us
suffering when we suffer
dying when we die

And I saw us running
I watched us doing it
the car the fox the shadow
those other selves for witness
--and I wondered about things
I wondered about all sorts of things
his face and what he looked like
apart from a million foxes
the rest of his breed and kin
and whether his foxy character
glowed in his brain and eye
and about this damn predicament
of having a dozen bodies
like fascinated observers
all of them watching us watching
deep in the moonlight forest
or under the bedclothes loving
or killing another animal
I was really philosophical
it was almost like a poem
and it had to end precisely
and ten minutes after midnight
so that I could drive to Belleville
keep an appointment in Belleville
and never forget a word

So here we are
and here we have been forever
running and running and running
your mate in the nearby forest
wondering where you got to
and failed to keep your appointment
an hour ago in the cedars
the mystery of why things happen
this way and never that way
the reason you kept her waiting
an hour or was it your lifetime
in case you go under the wheels

Of course I stopped
and gates of moonlight opened
and lightly he stepped inside
--it was silent that kind of silence
when live events are waiting
jammed at the doors of time
frozen in silver moonlight
the leaped into flux again
--he had to keep his appointment
no matter how late it was
and I had to drive to Belleville
both of us had our plans
plans of the uttermost importance
for going on living longer
for eating and drinking and sleeping
and maybe loving someone
or killing other animals
for being noble and human
or fox fox fox

- Al Purdy

[penguinpunk.livejournal.com]

Check out Mary Oliver.

[evilprodigy.livejournal.com]

By Alastair Reid
Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

[melange-fiesta.livejournal.com]

Not strictly about animals, but it involves them.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.


-- Adrienne Rich

[melange-fiesta.livejournal.com]

And, of course, there is always "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe!

[sandokai.livejournal.com]

practically anything by Mary Oliver!

[rejectomorph]

Yvor Winters

Elegy on a Young Airedale Bitch Lost Some Years Since in the Salt-Marsh


Low to the water's edge
You plunged; the tangled herb
Locked feet and mouth, a curb
Tough with the salty sedge.

Half dog and half a child,
Sprung from that roaming bitch,
You flung through dike and ditch,
Betrayed by what is wild.

The old dogs now are dead,
Tired with the hunt and cold,
Sunk in the earth and old.
But your bewildered head,

Led by what heron cry,
Lies by what tidal stream?—
Drenched with ancestral dream,
And cast ashore to dry.

[theotherchicago.livejournal.com]

This fella (http://johnnylexicon.livejournal.com/29382.html) has an incredible poem about that tiger that escaped from the San Francisco Zoo. It's the last one on that page.

[tiarahaze.livejournal.com]

"Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house" by Billy Collins