blinded
By smoke, drifts like torn paper
to the flames below.
Shadows
Spider,
Last of her kind,
Scuttles underground, safe;
Prepares her nest for young ones. But
None come.
The coming of night
Sun sinks
behind the high canopy;
the iron men are silenced.
The moon rises,
The firefly wakes.
Death pauses for a night.
Song of the forest
Our land has gone,
Our people flown.
Sun scorches the earth.
Our river weeps.
canopy – a covering of cloth held over a throne, or a bed, to protect it
| Post-reading | |
| 3. | Of the five genres which follow, choose the one that you feel best describes this poem. Give a reason for your choice: |
| a) | a praise poem |
| b) | a ballad |
| c) | a sonnet |
| d) | a protest poem/song |
| e) | a traditional song |
| 4. | In your opinion, which of the lines that the Amazonian Timber representative speaks most show his heartless business-like attitude? |
| 5. | Who are “the iron men” of stanza 5? |
| 6. | Why do none of the spider’s babies come to the nest she has prepared? |
| 7. | Contrast the first and the last stanzas. Focus particularly on the verbs. Explain why the last stanza is even more tragic than the first one. |
| 8. | Work in groups of six readers to present the poem. These are possible roles. |
| the Xingu Indian | |
| a representative from Amazon Timber Inc. (a company which chops down trees) | |
| a butterfly (who speaks Dusk's words) | |
| a spider (who speaks Shadows' words) | |
| the night | |
| the forest | |
| Prepare carefully. The group should discuss the readers’ interpretations of their parts, and whether they have captured the tone and meaning of the particular part of the poem. | |
| 9. | Do some research on this very important issue. There is a website called kids.mongabay.com/ which would supply you with a lot of information on the subject of where rainforests can be found, why rainforests are so important, and why people cut trees down. |
| Pre-reading | |
| 1. | We have quite a number of indigenous eagles in Africa. With what do you associate an eagle, other than keen eyesight (eagle-eyed)? |
| During reading | |
| 2. | Why are the eagle’s feet described as “crooked hands”? What literary device is being used? |
The eagle
Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls
azure – bright blue like the sky on a clear day
crag – mountain top
thunderbolt – flash of lightning
| Post-reading | |
| 3. | How does the rhyme scheme of the poem affect the way we imagine the eagle? |
| 4. | Why are the places where the eagle lives described as “lonely lands”? |
| 5. | The writer describes the sea as “wrinkled”. Why does he use such an unusual metaphor for the sea? |
| 6. | Look at the last line. |
| a) | Punctuation, line divisions and capitalised words are some ways of signalling how a poem should be read. The last line begins with “And”, and the line before ends with a comma, marking a pause. How does this invite us to say the line and imagine the dramatic dive of the eagle onto its prey? |
| b) | The king of the Roman gods threw thunderbolts at wrongdoers to punish or destroy them. How well does the image of the eagle as “like a thunderbolt” fit with its image in the rest of the poem? |
| c) | What does the last stanza suggest about the eagle’s effectiveness as a bird of prey? How successful a hunter do you think he is? |
| 7. | Which image in the poem do you think is the most effective one? Explain your choice. |
| Pre-reading | |
| 1. | “Leviathan” is an old word for a ‘large sea monster’ or whale. Those of you who are familiar with the Bible or the Koran will know the story of Jonah (Yunus) and the whale (or great fish). Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and then brought up alive on a shore so he could do important work there. In this poem the ‘monster’ is a puff-adder which is likened to the whale thats swallowed Jonah. |
| During reading | |
| 2. | How does the speaker invite us to sense the surprising speed with which the lizard is caught and then swallowed? |
Leviathan
Douglas Livingstone
A puff-adder, khaki,
Fatter than a stocking of pus
except for its short thin tail,
obese and quick
as certain light-footed dancers
took a dozing lizard.
Scaly little monster
With delicate hands and feet
Stupidly sluggish in the sun.
Panting, true,
But lizards breathe mostly
As if their lives depended.
Gone.
Enveloped by a slack bowel.
O Jonah, to tumble to
Those sickly deadly depths,
Slick-walled, implacably black.
