Poem of the month "Rooster" by Eric Ormsby

18 February 2013

Rooster

For Tippy

I like the way the rooster lifts his feet,
So jauntily exact,
Then droops one springy yellow claw aloft
Just like a tailor gathering up a pleat.
And then there are those small surprising lilts,
Both rollicking and staid,
That grace his bishop's gait,
Like a waltzer on a pair of supple stilts
Or a Russian on parade.

I like the way he swivels and then slants
His red, demented eye
To tipsy calibrations of his comb
And ogles the barnyard with a shopkeeper's stance.
Sometimes his glossy wattles shudder and bulge
As he bends his feathered ear
And listens, fixed in trance.
When drowsy grubs below the ground indulge
And then stretch up for air.

How promptly he administers his peck,
Brisk and executive,
And the careless victim flipflops in his grip!
I like the way his stubby little beak
Produces that dark, corroded croak
Like a grudging nail tugged out of stubborn wood:
No 'cock-a-doodle-doo' but awk-a-awk!
He yawps whenever he's in the mood
And the thirst and clutch of life are in his squawk.

Chiefly I love the delicate attention
Of the waking light that falls
Along his shimmery wings and bubbling plumes
As though light pleasured in tangerine and gentian
Or sported like some splashy kid with paints.
But Rooster forms his own cortège, gowns
Himself in marigold and shadow, flaunts
His scintillant, prismatic tints -
The poorest glory of a country town.

Eric Ormsby explains why he wrote a love poem to a rooster

I wrote this poem for my mother who had a special love for roosters she'd seen as a child in country towns. She often startled her friends by lively imitations of roosters crowing or chickens taking a dust bath.

Your rooster lives in a town and you depict him as a tailor and a bishop. What made you want to write about natural things persisting in an urban setting?

The hidden beauty of creatures we may encounter every day, even in a town, drew me to this rooster. A cat lazing on a windowsill, a swarm of starlings at evening, even the pigeons underfoot, appear wondrous if looked at closely. But I was also interested in the parallels between such creatures and ourselves: we too have been known to strut and crow like the rooster.

You woo the reader to look at the rooster, moving with you from what you 'like' to what you 'love'. Why?

Well, this is a kind of love poem to a rooster. What begins as admiration blossoms into love. This fowl, though usually destined for the Sunday stewpot, has great dignity; it can teach us something about the inherent nobility of creatures, all now so threatened.

Your last line is a paradox declaring the rooster 'the poorest glory of a country town'. How can poetry help us re-examine value in a world which knows only the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Poems assert value. A poem doesn't confer worth on a rooster or anything else. It derives its own worth as a made thing from the rooster and so helps us to value what we often overlook.

You are an Islamic scholar. What does Islam tell us about caring for our environment?

Islam teaches reverence for the environment as God's creation and holds that everything in creation speaks of its creator, though often in cryptic tones. It is our task to learn how to hear and decipher those tones.

'Rooster' by Eric Ormsby, from The Baboons of Hada, published by Carcanet Press and available in paperback and ebook formats.

Did you enjoy Eric's poem? No room for a rooster in your back yard? How about befriending another gloriously-coloured and industrious creature? Please join our bee campaign and put up a bee hotel.