An atomic sprite perched on a polished monster-stallion reigns over Ringling's revolving trinity of circus attractions Something the contour of a captured crab waving its useless pearly claws From a squat body pigmy arms and bow legs with their baroque calves curve in a bi-circular attitude to a ballerina's exstacy An effigy of Christmas Eves smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls it seems a sugar angel while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze its manly legs stamp on the vast rump of the horse An iridescent speck dripped from a rainbow onto an ebony cloud Crab-Angel I christen you minnikin of masquerade sex Helen of Lilliput? Hercules in a powder puff? SONG Had you been born in regions of the Unicorn To balance on his ivory horn perhaps - - - " Per Bacco! 'Tis an idiot dwarf hooked to a wire to make him jump " Automaton bare-back rider the circus-master jerks your invisible pendulence from an over-head pulley to your illusory leaps in up-a-loft signs the horse racing the orchestra in rushing show throw his whimsy wire-hung dominator to dart through circus skies of arc-lit dust Crab-Angel like a swimming star. clutching the tail-end of the Chimera An aerial acrobat floats on the coiling lightning of the whirligig lifts to the elated symmetry of Flight - - - A startled rose whirls in the chaos of the hoofs The jeering jangling jazz crashes to silence The dwarf - subsides like an ironic sigh to the soft earth and ploughs his bow-legged way laboriously towards the exit waving a yellow farewell with his perruque | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPRING by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE BLESSED VIRGIN, COMPARED TO THE AIR WE BREATHE by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM by HENRY KIRKE WHITE PENITENTIAL PSALM: 130. DE PROFUNDIS by THOMAS WYATT CRADLE SONG by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO ONE WHO DIED LAST YEAR by ANNA EMILIA BAGSTAD THE RING AND THE BOOK: BOOK 12. THE BOOK AND THE RING by ROBERT BROWNING |