Segment of a long poem by James Schuyler, to read more see Schuyler, Selected Poems, 1988, p 207
“The Morning of the Poem” (James Schuyler, 1980)
…get up and go inside
Where the logs snap and crackle and smoke and give off their
Heart and fleash-warming smell: the beautiful humourous white whippet
No longer lies, legs in the air, on the green velvet Victorian couch under
Mrs Appleyard’s painting on velvet of an epergne full of fruit: cant one,
Just one, mortal person or animal be immortal, live
Forever? Not shrivelling like Tithonus, not in an improbably colud-Cuckoo
Land you’d like to but can’t quite believe in:
ageless, immortal speedy
Here in Vermont, chaing rabbits, having a wonderful roll in the horse shit:
“Yum! Good” “Whippoorwill!¬ What have you done?”
(His Master’s Voice), the
Gracefull tail curling down and in-between his legs: can a tail curl down
Shamefacedly? His could, and he could strew a house with trash, leave
An uninviting mess on stairs: “Surprise! Surprise!”
or the night I came in
And found between me and my bed the contents of a three-pound box
Of the choicest candy: a cheval-de-frise of
chocolates: and
Most beautiful of all, on a long long lawn running,
racing as whippets
Are bred to do and leaping straight into
Kenwards’s arms, who
Casually closed them: quite an act!
… … …
Yes, that whippet is
The one I nominate for terrestrial immortality:
… ….
“The Morning of the Poem” (James Schuyler, 1980)
…get up and go inside
Where the logs snap and crackle and smoke and give off their
Heart and fleash-warming smell: the beautiful humourous white whippet
No longer lies, legs in the air, on the green velvet Victorian couch under
Mrs Appleyard’s painting on velvet of an epergne full of fruit: cant one,
Just one, mortal person or animal be immortal, live
Forever? Not shrivelling like Tithonus, not in an improbably colud-Cuckoo
Land you’d like to but can’t quite believe in:
ageless, immortal speedy
Here in Vermont, chaing rabbits, having a wonderful roll in the horse shit:
“Yum! Good” “Whippoorwill!¬ What have you done?”
(His Master’s Voice), the
Gracefull tail curling down and in-between his legs: can a tail curl down
Shamefacedly? His could, and he could strew a house with trash, leave
An uninviting mess on stairs: “Surprise! Surprise!”
or the night I came in
And found between me and my bed the contents of a three-pound box
Of the choicest candy: a cheval-de-frise of
chocolates: and
Most beautiful of all, on a long long lawn running,
racing as whippets
Are bred to do and leaping straight into
Kenwards’s arms, who
Casually closed them: quite an act!
… … …
Yes, that whippet is
The one I nominate for terrestrial immortality:
… ….
