Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA
Devil Bird of Dunne County: Cantos I-III
by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole
I
From an egg Gilbert raised the strange creature,
An egg most odd, of archaic feature,
One laid in a coop by everyday hens,
Yet such was its contour, beyond the ken
Of local farm-boys they brought it toute suite
To Gilbert’s study, and there with gas heat,
Among the beakers and scalpels and books,
And specimens stuffed in glass-fronted nooks,
Was it incubated, kept from the cold,
Infection and mouse, or sinister moulds
Which here on the farm blight bull, cow and crop,
And even young Gilbert struggled to stop
With all of his learning, acquired abroad
In colleges old where scholars have trod.
His fam’ly was rich, as pioneers go,
From lumber hewed down and up-river towed,
And now that the fields were settled and tame,
From work they retired to rest on their fame,
And Gilbert to read, to poke and to prod
The wonders produced by his native sod.
II
The egg he beheld, and caressed his chin,
“What are you,” he thought, “we’re all wonderin’.
From what place you come, what distant time past
Bequeaths us your shell, the yolk hereby cast
Upon our good grace to hatch and to rear
Whatever ye be, though somewhat I fear
An advent obscure betokens bad fate,
Which no faith or science can help abate;
No matter that, forsooth I proceed
To coddle you close, and motherly feed
Whatever comes forth when outer rinds crack,
Even if its people on which you snack.
God blast me, I’ve said it, that’s what I am,
A servant to knowledge, all else be damned,
And this backward patch of rubes and the dumb,
A realm rich in research which I can plumb
For nuggets of insight, when publish I
To me praise will flow from eminents high,
Accolades sweet whose near presence I lost
When back to this wasteland fortune me tossed.”
III
At that instant then when smoked cold the night,
And wavered, draft-blown, the single wax light
That burnt at the church, where worked late the priest
On this evening of the midwinter feast
Which kindles good hearts amid so much drear,
Diffusing afar the cup of good cheer,
There rustled a sound, or was it a thought
That just beyond reach an inkling he caught,
The earnest young man, who silence well knew
For out of the hush he sustenance drew;
But something had changed on his rural watch,
Something had entered, a festering notch
Was cut in the skin, that coddling cocoon
Of friendship and kin, their assuaging boon;
And though it began the smallest of ways,
And where it would lead few could surely say
In those early hours, except at a house
Infested with filth, condemned by the louse
To be one apart, where harboured the ilk
Who evil imbibe with their mother’s milk.