Toad

Olivia Clifton-Bligh

 

 

 

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.

Norman McCaig

McCaig does a little like Neruda here, spotlights a toad for us blind ones. Shows us a magic we had forgotten how to see. 

This is the thing about poetry, I need it because I have magic-blindness, I cannot see the world for what it is, I can only see "normal" and "ordinary".

I am under an evil enchantment and poetry is the only way to break the spell. 

If I could see the world the way it really is -

I would think in poetry.