← v5n1, Spring 2006
Poetry · Volume 5, Number 1

Sheep

Caedmon’s dream (c. 658-680), herdsman, alone

In outer dark, necessary angel’s command, neither wrote

Nor read (nor sung, left hall in shame), heben til hrofe,

Roofed only by heaven, praised hefaenricaes uard,

Great God, heaven’s shepherd, “first English Christian

Poet,” not first poetic shepherd, Theocritus, ,

Centuries (c. 270 BCE) before, contenders, love’s lamenters,

Unlike you, not really herders, only “got up as poets

In farmer suits,” thoughts muffled in wool, thick tufts caught

By wind and wire, Skye (06/24/87), Virgil, too (39 BCE),

“Tu modo nascenti puero,” pastoral prophecy or just more

Wool gathering, shipped sheep, “sniffed, poor things, for their

Green fields,” cry, fall ill, one by one by one, die, wooly

Bundles, mere mutton, and yet, drowsy herdsman, you heard

“That great shepherd of the sheep,” love’s continuing

Demand, “feed my lambs,” no doubt, “feed my sheep.”