The Dizzy Summer Calf

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Words by Norman McCaig, 1943.

The Dizzy Summer Calf

The dizzy summer calf, hen chasing sparrow,
bristle of the green, the tilted grids of waggons,
the posing mare in a violent tent of shadow--
sun burns on these; his fiery light is steep,
and the day halts and pants between step and step.

No water in this quilted country dances
or shivers in cool shocks in pots of limestone
or melts the fiery flakes with bubble flounces
or echoes birches with its shaggy fall,
but in green pools holds its own funeral.

No music now but colour, green on green;
breathless in light the wind had lost it's voice;
no thrush to string the moment on a tune.
And cuckoo sounds on his horn no longer from
his castle of shadow in the summer dream.

The puff of heat balled in my dancing eye
bows like a hazel twig above desire
of crisping sand and dowses for the sea,
and whilst a furnace moment halts and hangs
I am where water walks and the wind sings.