Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MENAGERIE, by WALT MASON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MENAGERIE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: All living creatures seem to throng the road
Last Line: That's suffering to croak.
Subject(s): Animals; Country Life; Travel; Journeys; Trips


ALL living creatures seem to throng the road that I would tour along, in my tin

chug-mobile; they'll leave their homes and travel far, to throw themselves
beneath my car, and bust a costly wheel. All thoroughfares, with mules and
goats, and sheep and hens and calves and shotes, forevermore are packed; I just

collided with a cow—against her adamantine brow, my radiator cracked. The
cows will leave the tender grass to block the road where I must pass, upon my
road to town; the hogs will leave their sparkling swill to make a stand on
yonder hill, and turn me upside down. Anon I squash a farmer's hen, that surely

wasn't worth a yen, when it was in its prime; but now I hear the owner howl.
"You killed my rare imported fowl, of pedigree sublime!" I jog along and break
the slats of dogs and ducks and geese and cats, and always, when they die, the
price goes up to beat the band; "They were the finest in the land," I hear the
owners cry. The way the farmers' beasts run loose is certainly a great abuse, it

is no more a joke; and if I travel west or east, at every corner there's a beast

that's suffering to croak.





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