Two of Norman MacCaig’s quirky, charming nature portraits from his magisterial volume of Collected Poems, edited by his son Ewen (Polygon).
TOAD
Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?
You clamber towards me on your four corners —
right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.
I love you for being a toad,
for crawling like a Japanese wrestler,
and for not being frightened.
I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it,
and set you down outside directly under
every star.
A jewel in your head? Toad,
you’ve put one in mine,
a tiny radiance in a dark place.
HERON
It stands in water, wrapper in heron. It makes
An absolute exclusion of everything else
By disappearing in itself, yet is the presence
Of hidden pools and secret, reedy lakes.
It twirls small ?sh from the bright water ?akes.
(Glog goes the small ?sh down.) With lifted head
And no shoulders at all, it periscopes round —
Steps, like an aunty, forward — gives itself shoulders
And vanishes, a shilling in a pound,
Making no sight as other things make no sound.
Until, releasing its own spring, it ?lls
The air with heron, ?nds its height and goes,
A spear between two clouds. A cliff receives it
And it is gargoyle. All around it hills
Stand in the sea; wind from a brown sail spills.
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