Woodchucks
by Maxine Kumin
Gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets’ neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck’s face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.
Ten minutes later I dropped the mother.She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next.O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.
There’s one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form.I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they’d all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Джон Мильтон – По случаю своего двадцатитрехлетия
- Survivor by Roger McGough
- O Do Not Love Too Long by William Butler Yeats
- Scribbles by Suchi Gaur
- Василий Тредиаковский – Видеть все женские лица
- I am your friend by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Иван Киуру – Оазис
- Ольга Седакова – Ветер прощанья
- Robert Burns: I Hae Been At Crookieden:
- The Lie by Sir Walter Raleigh
- Владимир Маяковский – Сплетник
- Robert Burns: Willie Chalmers: Mr. Chalmers, a gentleman in Ayrshire, a particular friend of mine, asked me to write a poetic epistle to a young lady, his Dulcinea. I had seen her, but was scarcely acquainted with her, and wrote as follows:-
- A Brook in the City by Robert Frost
- Olney Hymn 22: Prayer For A Blessing In The Young by William Cowper
- The Coal Picker poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).