KELBURN JAGUAR
Waiting for my rail-connection to Fort William I popped into the Wetherspoon's Bar to pass some time, as you do. When I saw this I had to have a pint. Kelburn is a Barrhead based brewery so this fine ale has not had to travel far. The brewer describes it as follows:
"A golden, full bodied ale with undertones of grapefruit and a long lasting citrus, hoppy aftertaste.
THIS BEER HAS BITE" (I love that). But regardless of its taste it naturally reminded me of one of my favourite Ted Hughes animals, for any excuse for a beer is any excuse for a poem! :-
THE JAGUAR
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
There is a Utube video of Hughes reading this bit of his work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWXL5WOvc1M
Ted Hughes - 1930-1998.
KELBURN JAGUAR
Waiting for my rail-connection to Fort William I popped into the Wetherspoon's Bar to pass some time, as you do. When I saw this I had to have a pint. Kelburn is a Barrhead based brewery so this fine ale has not had to travel far. The brewer describes it as follows:
"A golden, full bodied ale with undertones of grapefruit and a long lasting citrus, hoppy aftertaste.
THIS BEER HAS BITE" (I love that). But regardless of its taste it naturally reminded me of one of my favourite Ted Hughes animals, for any excuse for a beer is any excuse for a poem! :-
THE JAGUAR
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
There is a Utube video of Hughes reading this bit of his work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWXL5WOvc1M
Ted Hughes - 1930-1998.