[English - Poetry] Clanchy: The Natual History Museum

[damiro]

Hi there,

We've been asked to do a markless exercice which consists in answering a question.

The question is « What is the function and symbolism of the stuffed animals in "The Natural History Museum" ?»

I would have answered that question if my dictionary had allowed me to clearly understand this poem (what is the reason of my presence here )

Some passage, a lot of in reality stay opaque and vague to me... Woud you please help me to undestand.

Here is the poem:

They are glassed an boxed like childhood,
The dead creatures in their pastoral dance:
Grinning fox with native squirrel,
Ferrets in a stiff quadrille. Parents nod
And watch their children watch bloodshed
Always about to happen: the wee mouse
Crouch; the wildcat locked in pointless
Hunch. For Bosch, the first cat padded
Into pallid Eden with a small beast
Limp in is mouth. A child smiles. Her father
Aims a camera. He clicks, and does not ask
What the half-silvered hare asserts,
Shot on the cusp of change, forever
Almost escaping, kicking his heels at the dark


And here is what I've written abut it: The stiffed animals look absurdly frozen in an odd posture: The fox is smiling with a squirrel; the mouse is crouched. They do not look like real animals and they are out of the time.

These animals seem to be there to entertain the human beings. They are subjected, dominated as well as admired by the visitors as if animals had disappeared.

In red and green are the two passages I can't actually deal with.

Another grammatical question: why is there no -es added to crouch in the wee mouse crouch

and also, what does the cusp of change mean? I can't find an explination in any of my dictionaries.

Many thanks all,

Damiro

[Gravier]

Hi there,

The question is « What is the function and symbolism of the stuffed animals in "The Natural History Museum" ?»

They are glassed an boxed like childhood,
The dead creatures in their pastoral dance:
Grinning fox with native squirrel,
Ferrets in a stiff quadrille. Parents nod
And watch their children watch bloodshed
Always about to happen: the wee mouse
Crouch; the wildcat locked in pointless
Hunch. For Bosch, the first cat padded
Into pallid Eden with a small beast
Limp in is mouth. A child smiles. Her father
Aims a camera. He clicks, and does not ask
What the half-silvered hare asserts,
Shot on the cusp of change, forever
Almost escaping, kicking his heels at the dark


And here is what I've written abut it: The stiffed animals look absurdly frozen in an odd posture: The fox is smiling with a squirrel; the mouse is crouched. They do not look like real animals and they are out of the time.

These animals seem to be there to entertain the human beings. They are subjected, dominated as well as admired by the visitors as if animals had disappeared.

In red and green are the two passages I can't actually deal with.

Another grammatical question: why is there no -es added to crouch in the wee mouse crouch

and also, what does the cusp of change mean? I can't find an explination in any of my dictionaries.

Many thanks all,

Damiro

The cusp of change sounds like the edge of change - animals immobilized between two states/movements/actions. Because it's lifelike, but suspended, it's defying change, leaning both ways, or not leaning at all, no one really knew for sure.
Similarly the mouse is not crouching, nor does it crouch, it is watched while it does: watch the children watch the wee mouse crouch. Or it's just the crouch of any wee mouse. Or it is ("God forbid"), some non-indicative form, lesssening the actualisation of the action. In any case, a verb in a substantive form is losing agent and action; suspention again. The wildcat is locked, as in stopped halfway through its motion (of hunching, it seems), The rest of the red part seems to refer to a painting by Hieronymus "Jerome Bosch" Van Haken - a Judgement something, most likely, with a mention of Eden. The cat is so still and essentially a cat, it's becoming not just any cat, but the very cat that Bosch sees or would see, and paints or would paint, if he's to picture the first cat to be judged with a dead mouse in its mouth.

Green: The father - of the child mentioned earlier - shoots a picture and that makes a clicking noise; the father is not wondering or enquiring to anyone present about the objects of the speech that we are asked to assume is to be found in the posture of the bunny rabbit of the great plains. Metatextual hypallage if you will, or plain old elegiac trick, the bunny was trying to say something, and quite understandably still is, when it was offered, presumably with as much care and a lot less luck, the fate of a Republican attorney on a bad Bud buzz; and funnily enough, the rabbit is also having its picture taken, but the pun is not really that much of a joke that the poem could end on a high note.
Other than that, it's a great poem.

[gilou]

I concurr. A great poem indeed.
Who wrote it?
EDIT: I found out (with the help of google) Kate Clanchy.
A+,