I
That Elf
Riding his awkward pair of haunchy legs
That weird long-eared Elf
Wobbling down the highway
Don’t overtake him, don’t try to drive past him,
He’s scatty, he’s all over the road,
He can’t keep his steering, in his ramshackle go-cart,
His big loose wheels, buckled and rusty,
Nearly wobbling off
And all the screws in his head wobbling and loose
And his eyes wobbling
II
The Hare is a very fragile thing.
The life in the hare is a glassy goblet, and her yellow-fringed frost-flake belly says: Fragile.
The hare’s bones are light glass. And the hare’s face –
Who lifted her face to the Lord?
Her new-budded nostrils and lips,
For the daintiest pencillings, the last eyelash touches
Delicate as the down of a moth,
And the breath of awe
Which fixed the mad beauty-light
In her look
As if her retina
Were a moon perpetually at full.
Who is it, at midnight on the A30,
The Druid soul,
The night-streaker, the sudden lumpy goblin
That thumps your car under the belly
Then cries with human pain
And becomes a human baby on the road
That you dare hardly pick up?
Or leaps, like a long bat with little headlights,
Straight out of darkness
Into the driver’s nerves
With a jangle of cries
As if the car had crashed into a flying harp
So that the driver’s nerves flail and cry
Like a burst harp.
III
Uneasy she nears
As if she were being lured, but fearful,
Nearer.
Like a large egg toppling itself – mysterious!
Then she’ll stretch, tall, on her hind feet,
And lean on the air,
Taut – like a stilled yacht waiting on the air –
And what does the hunter see? A fairy woman?
A dream beast?
A kangaroo of the March corn?
The loveliest face listening,
Her black-tipped ears hearing the bud of the blackthorn
Opening its lips,
Her black-tipped hairs hearing tomorrow’s weather
Combing the mare’s tails,
Her snow-fluff belly feeling for the first breath,
Her orange nape, foxy with its dreams of the fox –
Witch-maiden
Heavy with trembling blood – astounding
How much blood there is in her body!
She is a moony pond of quaking blood
Twitched with spells, her gold-ringed eye spellbound –
Carrying herself so gently, balancing
Herself with the gentlest touches
As if her eyes brimmed –