The feathers lift —like the sudden coming on
of sprinklered water
over imperial lawns.
Breeze-shaken and trembling —
you imagine the break
into a drift of wish-flowers .
Now the fan streaming with dance —
(imagine the face of anangels
treaming with lightin an annunciation
It's the lovely silver rippling
at a saint's fingertips
in a Kirlian photograph.
Seeingis like entering a Chinese shop
full of paper lanterns —
voices whispering
in room after room like hands
caressing ceremonial silk —
until you come out
uto a farmyard screeching of hens
The peacock is just another sad rag-picker
about a cage, alone
in the knowledge of its palatial etiquette
It goes about the pen-muck with the geese,
the yokels of turkeys slubbering at scraps, hen-poor
Its chicken-wire existence against which the tail,
at times,flounces itself like a Marie Antoinette or glows like
Saint Theresa among the stricke
written by Judith Beveridge
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LONG night succeeds thy little day;
Oh blighted blossom! can it be,
That this grey stone, and grassy clay,
Have clos'd our anxious care of thee?
The half-form'd speech of artless thought
That spoke a mind beyond thy years;
The song, the dance, by nature taught;
The sunny smiles, the transient tears;
The symmetry of face and form,
The eye with light and life replete;
The little heart so fondly warm,
The voice so musically sweet;
These, lost to hope, in memory yet
Around the hearts that lov'd thee cling,Shadowing,
with long and vain regret,
The too fair promise of thy spring.
By-Thomas Love Peacock
