I switch on Channel News Asia everyday morning, for more than just news... But I never expected to see this pop up. The video is something that cant derive its poetic justice from words. But the verse in itself was absolute bliss.
Here it goes...
I saw a peacock, with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet, drop down hail
I saw a cloud, with ivy circled round
I saw a sturdy oak, creep on the ground
I saw a pismire, swallow up a whale
I saw a raging sea, brim full of ale
I saw a venice glass, sixteen foot deep
I saw a well, full of men's tears that weep
I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire
I saw a house, as big as the moon and higher
I saw the sun, even in the midst of night
I saw the man that saw these sights.
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The search has just begun !!!
2 comments:
Margaret Atwood describes this "trick" poem as "the first poem I can remember that opened up the possibility of poetry for me." The trick is the two ways it can be understood; read a line at a time, or read from the middle of one line to the middle of the next. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes notes that it appears in a commonplace book dated to around 1665; it seems to have been first published in the Westminster-Drollery in 1671.
try reading this again in this way:
I saw a peacock.
With a fiery tail, I saw a blazing comet.
Drop down hail, I saw a cloud.
With ivy circles round, I saw a sturdy oak.
Creep on the ground, I saw a pismire.
Swallow up a whale, I saw a raging sea.
makes more sense... but just not as pretty.
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