Monologue Of A Polar Fox On An Alaskan Fur Farm Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCD EFDB GHBI GJKL IMNO PMMQ RMST MMUM VWMD BXMB YZMA2 TB2CM C2MMM D2D2MD AE2MM BMF2R G2BEM RIH2B BI2MM M| I am a blue fox on a gray farm | A |
| Condemned to slaughter by my color | B |
| behind this gnawproof wire screen | C |
| I find no comfort in being blue | D |
| - | |
| Lord but I want to molt I burn | E |
| to strip myself of myself in my frenzy | F |
| but the luxuriant bristling blue | D |
| seeps through the skin scintillant traitor | B |
| - | |
| How I howl feverishly I howl | G |
| like a furry trumpet of the last judgement | H |
| beeseeching the stars either for freedom forever | B |
| or at least forever to be molting | I |
| - | |
| A passing visitor captured my howl | G |
| on a tape recorder What a fool | J |
| He didn't howl himself but he might | K |
| begin to if he were caught in here | L |
| - | |
| I fall to the floor dying | I |
| Yet somehow I fail to die | M |
| I stare in depression at my own Dachau | N |
| and I know I'll never escape | O |
| - | |
| Once after dining on a rotten fish | P |
| I saw that the door was unhooked | M |
| toward the stary abyss of flight I leaped | M |
| with a pup's perennial recklessness | Q |
| - | |
| Lunar gems cascaded across my eyes | R |
| The moon was a circle I understood | M |
| that the sky is not broken into squares | S |
| as it had been from within the cage | T |
| - | |
| Alaska's snowdrits towered all around | M |
| and I desperately capered diseased | M |
| and freedom did a Twist inside my lungs | U |
| with the stars I had swallowed | M |
| - | |
| I played pranks I barked nonsense | V |
| at the trees I was my own pure self | W |
| And the iridescent snow was unafraid | M |
| that it was also very blue | D |
| - | |
| My mother and father didn't love each other | B |
| but they mated How I'd like | X |
| to find a girl fox so that I could | M |
| tumble and fly with her in this sumptuous powder | B |
| - | |
| But then I'm tired The snow is too much | Y |
| I cannot lift my sticking paws | Z |
| I have found no friend no girl friend | M |
| A child of captivity is too weak for freedom | A2 |
| - | |
| He who's concieved in a cage will weep for a cage | T |
| Horrified I understood how much I love | B2 |
| that cage where they hide me behind a screen | C |
| and the fur farm my motherland | M |
| - | |
| And so I returned frazzled and beaten | C2 |
| No sooner did the cage clang shut | M |
| than my sense of guilt became resentment | M |
| and love was alchemized again to hate | M |
| - | |
| In you Alaska I howled in lost dispair | D2 |
| In prison now I am howling in dispair | D2 |
| My America I am lost | M |
| but who hasn't gotten lost in you | D |
| - | |
| True there are changes on the fur farm | A |
| They used to suffocate us in sacks | E2 |
| Now they kill us in the modern mode | M |
| electrocution It's wonderfully tidy | M |
| - | |
| I contemplate my Eskimo girl keeper | B |
| Her hand rustles endearingly over me | M |
| He fingers scratch the back of my neck | F2 |
| But a Judas sadness floods her angel eyes | R |
| - | |
| She saves me from all diseases | G2 |
| and won't let me die from hunger | B |
| but I know when the time set firm as iron | E |
| arrives she will betray me as is her duty | M |
| - | |
| Brushing a touch of moisture from her eyes | R |
| she will ease a wire down my throat crooning | I |
| BE HUMANE TO THE EMPLOYEES ON FUR FARMS | H2 |
| INSTITUTE THE OFFICE OF THE ELECTROCUTIONER | B |
| - | |
| I would like to be naiive like my father | B |
| but I was born in captivity I am not him | I2 |
| The one who feeds me will betray me | M |
| The one who pets me will kill me | M |
| - | |
| - | |
| Translated by John Updike with Albert C Todd | M |
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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