Essay

THE BEAR ON THE DELHI ROAD

Earle Birney From:    Fall by Fury. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977. With permission of the Estate of Earle Birney.

Unreal      tall as a myth by the road the Himalayan bear is beating the brilliant air with his crooked arms About him two men      bare spindly as locusts      leap One pulls on a ring in the great soft nose      His mate flicks      flicks with a stick up at the rolling eyes They have not led him here down from the fabulous hills to this bald alien plain and the clamorous world      to kill but simply to teach him to dance They are peaceful both      these spare men of Kashmir      and the bear alive is their living      too If      far on the Delhi way around him galvanic they dance it is merely to wear      wear from his shaggy body the tranced wish forever to stay only an ambling bear four-footed in berries It is no more joyous for them in this hot dust to prance out of reach of the praying claws sharpened to paw for ants in the shadows ofdeodars It is not easy to free myth from reality or rear this fellow up to lurch      lurch with them in the tranced dancing of men

The Stenographers

http://www.augustpoetry.org/poets/Page.htm

Friend of my youth

http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/CzifraZsuzsanna/-Friend_of_my_Youth-.pdf