And creep away; and where the magpie dabs
His wing at muddy dyke in aged root
He makes a nest and fills it full of fruit
On the hedge bottom hunts for crabs and sloes
And whistles like a cricket as he goes.
It rolls up like a ball or shapeless hog
When gypsies hunt it with their noisy dogs.
I've seen it in their camps they call it sweet
Though black and bitter and unsavoury meat.
Attention itself, in these poems -- one recent and one written nearly two centuries ago -- seems by its patient intensity to break down distinctions between objective and subjective: between "identification" as taxonomy and as a feeling.
("Caught" appears in Elise Partridge's book "Fielder's Choice." Signal Editions/Vehicule Press. Copyright© 2002 by Elise Partridge.)
