Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

John Mallet

print this page

An unusual sighting

I knew a man who saw the unicorn
And said it was white and pure,
Cropping the grass at the margin of his lawn.
I asked him, was he sure?

“Oh yes!” And the dew of dawn it was drinking, drinking
As he opened his door and it raised its sad, wise head.
The scrape of plank upon threshold, the cold latch clinking
Startled the pure white unicorn, and it fled.

For its horn I was shown a thing like a narwhal’s tooth
Which my friend had “picked up” (though not at the edge of his lawn).
Yet he, who had seen the beast, must have told me truth,
For only the pure in heart see the unicorn.

I am sad such wonders no longer come to birth,
That the man is dead and the beast has deserted the lawn.
A wild, pure creature no longer inhabits the earth:
I speak of the man. To Hell with the unicorn.

 

John Mallet is an historian of ceramics.

Page(s) 36

Back to top