Thursday, December 13, 2007

"Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes"

I'm not a big poetry nut, but I just had to share a poem I recently came across. Hey, it's about buffaloes. From "The Ghosts of the Buffaloes" by Vachel Lindsay, a Springfield, Illinois native who penned this in 1914:

"And the wind crept by
Alone, unkempt, unsatisfied,
The wind cried and cried-
Muttered of massacres long past,
Buffaloes in shambles vast...
Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high
Rose loyal old buffaloes, row upon row.
The lords of the prairie came galloping by.
Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast,
A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west.

With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues,
Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs,
Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain,
Goring the laggards, shaking the main,
Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes.
Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise.
Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks
With shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks.
Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam . . . "

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