ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
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| Cat and Mouse
On the sheep-cropped summit, under hot sun, The mouse crouched, staring out the chance It dared not take. Woods, villages, farms hummed its heat-heavy Stupor of life. Whether in God’s eye or the eye of a cat. Ted Hughes |
I no longer have my 1965 vintage cat and mouse sweater chain. But I remember it well and was able to track down a few photos on the internet. I must have worn it to school every day in 2nd grade, until the mouse's tail snapped in two. Even after that, I saved at the bottom of my trinket box for a long time, along with my broken Snow White Watch (3rd grade).
These two poems -- above by Ted Hughes, below by William Blake
-- align perfectly with the drama of the sweater guard. Look! There is the glittering "eye of a cat," pursuing the anxious mouse. And there is the "end of a golden string," enticing the cat in its perpetual conflict with the universe.
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| I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall. William Blake |
here are a few glittering examples:
Robert Frost:
"nothing gold can "
Barbara Kunz Loots:
"watch the gold illusion drift away"
Joseph Parry:
"Make new friends,
but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold."
Johnny Marks:
"Silver and gold . . .
How do you measure its worth?
Just by the pleasure
It gives here on Earth."
Shakespeare:
"all that
glisters / glistens / glitters
is not gold"
Spandau Ballet:
"Gold!
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible
Always believe in, 'cause you are
Gold . . ."
Yeats:
" . . . pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun."
The Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Re: Jewel, Rainbow, Splendor
Heirloom Jewelry
Diamond Studs Are Forever
Choose Dearests, Choose
Where is Fancy Bred
AND MORE
Also in my jewelry box:
Three Sisters' Pin & Pendant
that my sisters and I wear whenever we're together
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, October 14th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
From Claude:
ReplyDeleteRoethke's "The Meadow Mouse." As unflinchingly observant as Hughes, but gentler & without the latter's flashes of satisfied cruelty, in life as well as art, IMO.
The Meadow Mouse
1
In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a minuscule puppy.
Now he's eaten his three kinds of cheese and drunk from his
bottle-cap watering-trough—
So much he just lies in one corner,
His tail curled under him, his belly big
As his head; his bat-like ears
Twitching, tilting toward the least sound.
Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.
2
But this morning the shoe-box house on the back porch is empty.
Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? —
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,—
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.
Theodore Roethke
https://allpoetry.com/The-Meadow-Mouse