THE BEDAZZLED STAG

The grave Canadian deer
Gazed from the mountain where he stood,
High on the wall, calm, austere,
Over vast distances of wood:
Polished flooring and veneer.

What does it mean, this harsher light?
The silence and appliances' hum,
There beat no beating wings in flight,
No hooves — resounding as they come
On mountaintops of echoing rock —
Strike like the striking of the clock.

So he stands, proud and stiff,
On the sheer pictorial cliff,
High above the woolen river
And the woven valleys deep;

When curtains flutter, then a quiver
Runs through the tapestry —
A shiver:
Wind, or the beginning of a leap.

OXEN AND CHILDREN

Everywhere are pastoral nouns in "s",
Swishing their tails, impassible and rural,
Musk oxen browse with sibilant excess,
While cattle is singular as a plural.

Children are ancient, oxen — a chimera,
Once they lived among their kith and kin,
Multiple creatures ending all with "en",
Survivors now of a linguistic era.

More than one child who was playing
Is suddenly summoned and admonished,
For more than one ox he watched is straying,
Implausible endings fail to astonish.

Exceptions were once the common stock,
Each relic was an ordinary word,
Penned-in thoughts and fluttering talk,
Ruminants and flocks,
Filled the yard, their quaintness still unheard.