THE GNAT
The shepherd Watkin heard an inner voice
Calling "My creature, ho! be warned, be ready!"
Calling, "The moment comes, therefore be ready!"
And a third time calling, "Creature, be ready!"
This old poor man mistook the call, which sounded
Not for himself, but for his pensioner.
Now (truth or phantasy) the shepherd nourished
Fast in his brain, due earnings of transgression,
A creature like to that avenging fly
Once crept unseen in at King Herod's ear,
Tunnelling gradually inwards, upwards,
Heading for flowery pastures of the brain,
And battened on such grand, presumptuous fare
As grew him brazen claws and brazen hair
And wings of iron mail. Old Watkin felt
A like intruder channelling to and fro.
He cursed his day and sin done in past years,
Repentance choked, pride that outlawed his heart,
So that at night often in thunderous weather
Racked with the pain he'd start
From sleep, incontinently howling, leaping,
Striking his hoar head on the cottage walls,
Stamping his feet, dragging his hair by the roots.
He'd rouse the Gnat to anger, send it buzzing
Like a huge mill, scraping with metal claws
At his midpoint of being; forthwith tumble
With a great cry for Death to stoop and end him.
Now Watkin hears the voice and weeps for bliss,
The voice that warned "Creature, the time is come."
Merciful Death, was it Death, all his desire?
Promised of Heaven, and speedy? O Death, come!
Only for one thought must he make provision,
For honest Prinny, for old bob-tail Prinny.
Another master? Where? These hillside crofters
Were spiteful to their beasts and mercenary.
Prinny to such? No, Prinny too must die.
By his own hand, then? Murder! By what other?
No human hand should touch the sacrifice,
No human hand;
God's hand then, through his temporal minister.
Three times has Watkin in the morning early
When not a soul was rising, left his flock,
Come to the Minister's house through the cold mist,
Clicked at the latch and slowly moved the gate,
Faltered, held back and dared not enter in.
"Not this time, Prinny, we'll not rouse them yet,
To-morrow, surely, for our death is tokened,
My death and your death with small interval.
We meet in fields beyond; be sure of it, Prinny!"
On the next night
The busy Gnat, swollen to giant size,
Pent-up within the skull, knew certainly,
As a bird knows in the egg, his hour was come.
The thrice repeated call had given him summons ...
He must out, crack the shell, out, out!
He strains, claps his wings, arches his back,
Drives in his talons, out! out!
In the white anguish of this travail, Watkin
Hurls off his blankets, tears an axe from the nail
Batters the bed, hews table, splits the floor,
Hears Prinny whine at his feet, leaps, strikes again,
Strikes, yammering.
At that instant with a clatter
Noise of a bursting dam, a toppling wall,
Out flies the new-born creature from his mouth
And humming fearsomely like a huge engine,
Rackets about the room, smites the unseen
Glass of half-open windows, reels, recovers,
Soars out into the meadows, and is gone.
Silence prolonged to an age. Watkin still lives?
The hour of travail by the voice foretold
Brought no last throbbings of the dying Body
In child-birth of the Soul. Watkin still lives.
Labourer Watkin delves in the wet fields.
Did an old shepherd die that night with Prinny,
Die weeping with his head on the outraged corpse?
Oh, he's forgotten. A dead dream, a cloud.
Labourer Watkin delves, drowsily, numbly,
His harsh spade grates among the buried stones.