Animal cracker poem


"Draw me a lion.”
So I set my pen
to work. Produce a lazy, kindly beast …
Colour it yellow.

“Does it bite?”
“Sometimes,
but only when it’s angry—
if you pull its tail
or say that it is just another cat …”
But for the most part, indolent, biddable,
basking in the sun of ancient pride.

(Outside, the sunlight seems a trifle dulled
and there’s a distant roaring, like a pride
of lions, cross at being awakened
from long, deep sleep).

Then
“Draw me a tiger.”
Vision of a beast
compounded of Jim Corbett yarns
and Blake
stalks through my mind, blazing Nature’s warning,
black bars on gold.

“DRAW!”
You turn and draw the gun
on me, as if to show
that three-years-old understands force majeure
and as you pull the silly plastic trigger
all hell breaks loose; quite suddenly the sky
is full of smoke and orange stripes of flame.

BUT HERE THERE ARE NO TIGERS
HERE THERE ARE ONLY LIONS.

And their jackals
run panting, rabid in the roaring’s wake,
infecting all with madness as they pass
while My Lord
the Elephant sways in his shaded arbour,
wrinkles his ancient brows, and wonders—
if, did he venture out to quell this jungle-tide
of rising flame, he’d burn his tender feet.

“Put down that gun. If you do, and you’re good,
I’ll draw a picture of an elephant.
A curious beast that you must understand … .”

DONT LOOK OUT THE WINDOW—

Just a party down the lane
a bonfire, and some fireworks, and they’re burning—
No, not a tiger—just some silly cat.”

The Cathedral Builders - Poem by John Ormond

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,
with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
inhabited the sky with hammers,
defied gravity,
deified stone,
took up God's house to meet him,
and came down to their suppers
and small beer,
every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
quarrelled and cuffed the children,
lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,
and every day took to the ladders again,
impeded the rights of way of another summer's swallows,
grew greyer, shakier,
became less inclined to fix a neighbour's roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague,
got rheumatism,
decided it was time to give it up,
to leave the spire to others,
stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,
envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
cocked a squint eye aloft,
and said, 'I bloody did that.'