RACHEL HADAS
The Peacock in the Garden
When the peacock turned
his elegantly coroneted head
to
fix
me with his gleaming little eye
in order to measure the dis tance from the patch
of sunwarmed wall that was his lonely perch
to my shoulder where I sat on a sunwarmed bench,
I imagined the thump of a landing, the unwieldy weight,
the pecking beak and tearing talons. But
none of this rumed my tranquillity.
Bench and wall and weeping willow tree
wove such a stillness that my reverie
in the peacock's eye achieved assent,
I found in him so much of what I sought.
My silent dead looked out at me from him.
Oceans were coded on his brilliant back;
a deep green forest and a galaxy
were doubly folded in the starry tail
which he would stand and presently unfurl
once he made his mind up to jump down
(not onto me----I'd moved aside a little)
from where he roos ted on the sunwarmed wall.
