When I posted my doggerel about tygers and cheesecake, it contained a reference to bicycles that would seem cryptic were it read by someone who had not read:-
The Bicycle
- by Jerzy Harasymowicz
once
forgotten by tourists
a bicycle joined
a herd
of mountain goats
with its splendidly turned
silver horns
it became
their leader
with its bell
it warned them
of danger
with them
it partook
in romps
on the snow covered
glade
the bicycle
gazed from above
on people walking;
with the goats
it fought
over a goat,
with a bearded buck
it reared up at eagles
enraged
on its back wheel
it was happy
though it never
nibbled at grass
or drank
from a stream
until once
a poacher
shot it
tempted
by the silver trophy
of its horns
and then
above the Tatras was seen
against the sparkling
January sky
the angel of death erect
slowly
riding to heaven
holding the bicycle's
dead horns.
(trans. from Polish by Edmund Ordon)
This poem I found on Red Dirt Girl's now defunct poetry blog, and her own response to it follows.
About a bicycle, goats and two silver horns.
I sat at the table and started to type.
I realized: I’m wrong!
This poem has some bite!
So I tasted and chewed.
I digested and fed.
I savored and swallowed.
The juices ran red.
Now, his words, they are mine.
They float and they slumber.
They run thru my veins.
They’ve invaded my thoughts.
They live in my brain.
The bicycle image, goats, angel and snow,
I see in my dreams.
Film moving slow.
So this is my poem:
A tribute of sorts,
an ode to a bicycle
and some odd mountain goats."
08/2006 Red Dirt Girl.
