Hughes, Ted: A March Calf

Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whites

Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy,

A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up,

Standing in dunged straw

Under cobwebby beams, near the mud wall,

Half of him legs,

Shining-eyed, requiring nothing more

But that mother's milk come back often.

Everything else is in order, just as it is.

Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment.

This is just as he wants it.

A little at a time, of each new thing, is best.

Too much and too sudden is too frightening -

When I block the light, a bulk from space,

To let him in to his mother for a suck,

He bolts a yard or two, then freezes,

Staring from every hair in all directions,

Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion,

A little syllogism

With a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God's thumb.

You see all his hopes bustling

As he reaches between the worn rails towards

The topheavy oven of his mother.

He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue -

What did cattle ever find here

To make this dear little fellow

So eager to prepare himself?

He is already in the race, and quivering to win -

His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerks

In the elbowing push of his plans.

Hungry people are getting hungrier,

Butchers developing expertise and markets,

But he just wobbles his tail - and glistens

Within his dapper profile

Unaware of how his whole lineage

Has been tied up.

He shivers for feel of the world licking his side.

He is like an ember - one glow

Of lighting himself up

With the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening.

Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,

To be present at the grass,

To be free on the surface of such a wideness,

To find himself himself. To stand. To moo.