Panther

1929 –

2014

When the panther came
no belfrey rang alarums,
no cleric spat his tea.
When the panther came
the sky and lawn were still.
The panter came
through forest, 
through field,
up to the wall
and my one blossoming cherry tree.

I had constructed 
the world as it was
and had pared the body
from the customs of languor.
It pressed its nose against 
the pane and its gears
ground me away into ribbons
of dissonance.

It turned and sauntered
into the shadows. Its
paw marks on the earth
like cherries too ripe in a white bowl.

Vegetable-Life

Where the pulp lifts its germ and the sludge of beauty sighs,
where the leaf pulls the branch to the breathy earth,
where the rind cracks and buds rust into petals,
where the clove steams and cinnamon bark spits out cinnamon air,
where roots sweat and the earth boils in curds of steaming mud,
where the stem draws up the seed and holds it like a lamb to the sun,
where flowers rest their animal heads,
there, full throated, limp with seed, lush and smiling is
Vegetable-Life.

To come upon her you must journey through the rains,
and sleep through a night of fish smells;
there must be a dead

Ned O'Gorman

2001

Peace, after Long Madness

After a long madness peace is an assassin in the heart. Where there had been the clenched fist, the strung out sinew, the hamstrung grin, the erect eye and hand on every shadow like a spy, now the river springs from the crystal of its sleep in a sapphire lunge to the sea. A year of madness is a libation poured out of nettles and boiled herbs, of knives oiled with honey that cut silently to the spine. I was madness's kin, no, more its parent blood, its coursing lymph, its skeleton.

Ned O'Gorman

2001

Poems

Panther

More by this poet

Vegetable-Life

Peace, after Long Madness

Poems

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Panther

More by this poet

Vegetable-Life

Peace, after Long Madness

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