In the northern hemisphere |
Life seems to leap at the air, or skim
under the wind |
Like stags on rocky ground, or pawing
horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.
|
Or else rush horizontal to charge at
the sky’s horizon, |
Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.
|
Or slip like water slippery towards its
ends, |
As foxes, stoats, and wolves, and
prairie dogs.
|
Only mice, and moles, and rats, and
badgers, and beavers, and perhaps bears |
Seem belly-plumbed to the earth’s
mid-navel. |
Or frogs that when they leap come flop,
and flop to the centre of the earth.
|
But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when
she sits up |
Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop
that is heavy, and just touches earth.
|
The downward drip. |
The down-urge. |
So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.
|
Delicate mother Kangaroo |
Sitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge,
plumb-weighted, |
And lifting her beautiful slender face,
oh! so much more gently and finely-lined than a
rabbit’s, or
than a hare’s, |
Lifting her face to nibble at a round
white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.
|
Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face. |
Her full antipodal eyes, so dark, |
So big and quiet and remote, having
watched so many empty dawns in silent Australia.
|
Her little loose hands, and drooping
Victorian shoulders. |
And then her great weight below the
waist, her vast pale belly |
With a thin young yellow little paw
hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like
ribbon, |
Like a funny trimming to the middle of
her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and
one thin ear.
|
Her belly, her big haunches |
And in addition, the great muscular
python-stretch of her tail.
|
There, she shan’t have any more
peppermint drops. |
So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs
the air, and then turns, goes off in slow sad leaps |
On the long flat skis of her legs, |
Steered and propelled by that
steel-strong snake of a tail.
|
Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to
look back. |
While something stirs quickly in her
belly, and a lean little face comes out, as from a
window, |
Peaked and a bit dismayed, |
Only to disappear again quickly away
from the sight of the world, to snuggle down in the
warmth, |
Leaving the trail of a different paw
hanging out.
|
Still she watches with eternal, cocked
wistfulness ! |
How full her eyes are, like the full,
fathomless, shining eyes of an Australian black-boy |
Who has been lost so many centuries on
the margins of existence !
|
She watches with insatiable
wistfulness. |
Untold centuries of watching for
something to come, |
For a new signal from life, in that
silent lost land of the South.
|
Where nothing bites but insects and
snakes and the sun, small life. |
Where no bull roared, no cow ever
lowed, no stag cried, no leopard screeched, no lion
coughed, no dog barked, |
But all was silent save for parrots
occasionally, in the haunted blue bush.
|
Wistfully watching, with wonderful
liquid eyes. |
And all her weight, all her blood,
dripping sack-wise down towards the earth’s centre, |
And the live little one taking in its
paw at the door of her belly.
|
Leap then, and come down on the line
that draws to the earth’s deep, heavy centre.
|
D.H.
Lawrence |
Classic Poems |
|
[ The Mosquito ] [ Bare Almond Trees ] [ Humming Bird ] [ Kangaroo ] [ Snake ] [ Figs ] [ Eagle in New Mexico ] [ Wages ] |