Madge Hales
Winged forepaws ease from sitting fur,
Spatulate whiskers question there
But merely in friendly enquiry,
His full plum eye is animal easy.
He breathes no quicker than the normal
His whole attitude is natural, formal,
Has dignity. The soft alerting ears
Set fingers stroking. Fears
Twitch there as you watch,
The jaws quicken, you catch
The buck of teeth. The nerved fur
Lifts to anticipate stir
And he who leaps is living hare
Yet remains on the page. Resettles there.
Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: the Albrecht Durer House, Nuremberg.
So quiet it was in that high, sun-steeped room, So warm and still, that sometimes with the light Through the great windows, bright with bottle-panes, There’d float a chime from clock-jacks out of sight, Clapping iron mallets on green copper gongs.
But only in blown music from the town’s Quaint horologe could Time intrude . . . you’d say Clocks had been bolted out, the flux of years Defied, and that high chamber sealed away From earthly change by some old alchemist.
And, oh, those thousand towers of Nuremberg Flowering like leaden trees outside the panes: Those gabled roofs with smoking cowls, and those Encrusted spires of stone, those golden vanes On shining housetops paved with scarlet tiles!
And all day nine wrought-pewter manticores Blinked from their spouting faucets, not five steps Across the cobbled street, or, peering through The rounds of glass, espied that sun-flushed room With Dürer graving at intaglios.
O happy nine, spouting your dew all day In green-scaled rows of metal, whilst the town Moves peacefully below in quiet joy . . . O happy gargoyles to be gazing down On Albrecht Dürer and his plates of iron!
