Or in the orchard that night in July: the apple trees too thick with branches, unpruned, abandoned, to bear good fruit - the limbs moving slightly in still air with my drunkenness; a cloud passed over the moon sweeping the orchard with a shadow - the shadow moving thickly across the darkening field, a moving lustrous dark, toward a darker woodlot. ̺ ̺ ̺ Then the night exploded with crows - an owl or raccoon disturbed a nest - I saw them far off above the trees, small pieces of black in the moonlight in shrill fury circling with caw caw caw, skin prickling with its rawness brain swirling with their circling in recoil moving backward, crushing the fallen apples with my feet, the field moving then as the folds of a body with their caw caw caw. Young crows opened by owl's beak, raccoon's claws and teeth, night opened, brain broken as with a hammer by weight of blackness and crows, crushed apples and drunkenness. ̺ ̺ ̺ Or Christ bless torn Christ, crows, the lives of their young torn from the darkness, apples and the dead webbed branches choking the fruit; night and earth herself a drunken hammer, the girl's head, all things bruised or crushed as an apple. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ROME. AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY by THOMAS HARDY A WOMAN'S ANSWER by ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER LITTLE BELL by THOMAS WESTWOOD MARIA MINOR by MARGARET AVISON INSCRIPTION FOR AN ICE-HOUSE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD SONG by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE MY HEART AND I by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING THE NIGHT JOURNEY OF A RIVER by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO EARNEST AND IMPORTUNATE PRAYER by JOHN BYROM |