The Sunday Poem: Scavenger Crow

 Posted by (Visited 5817 times)  The Sunday Poem
Jul 022006
 

His claws and beak, tools of hunger, classify
Kernels on a tree powdered into gold.
I wish I did not recognize myself in him.
Where is his murder? He marks his boundaries,
Removing wood from corn, placing corn
In gullet, no flock beyond the sky and caw
Of hunger. A metal thing, he is,
Ball-bearing eyes and hammered feathers
Rusting away. He sorts to understand,
Desperately separating grains from wood grain,
A glutton wasting half his food.

This is a poem about analysis, I think, about the impulse to understand, and about what we lose and gain in the process. Mostly lose, in this case.

  3 Responses to “The Sunday Poem: Scavenger Crow”

  1. Don’t we “mostly lose” most of the time? Isn’t it those few who see the “wood” for it’s potential the one’s we call innovative? Are they not something different from the ones made of metal, robotic, rusting?

  2. Wow. Unbelievably bad. You should set that to some of your music; then you’d have horrible poetry set to awful music. A seemingly invincible combination.

  3. Raph,

    Lord, what fools these mortals be! Ignore these scoffers, Raph. I found it interesting. “Where is his murder?” is a striking phrase.

    Yehuda

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