Welcome to the second edition of Arkadiy's Daily Poetry. I read poetry on a daily basis. This activity helps me cope with stress and stay motivated to continue achieving great things. After seeing the benefits that this provides for me, I decided to start sharing this experience with others. I believe that steemit is the best place to start this journey. Join me and you will get enlightened every single day of the week.

As promised, this week will be dedicated to the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke. I learned about her poems during my IGCSE Literature course, to which I am greatly thankful as I would've never found this great poet without preparing for the certification in the first place.



Friesian Bull

He blunders through the last dream

of the night. I hear him, waking.

A brick and concrete stall, narrow

as a heifer's haunches. Steel bars

between her trap and his small yard.

A froth of slobbered hay droops

from the stippled muzzle. In the slow

rolling mass of his skull his eyes

surface like fish bellies.

He is chained while they swill his floor.

His stall narrows to rage. He knows

the sweet smell of a heifer's fear.

Remembered summer haysmells reach him,

a trace of the herd's freedom, cloverloaded

winds. The thundering speed

blows up the Dee breathing of plains,

of cattle wading in shallows.

His crazy eyes churn with their vision.

Introduction

"The Friesian bull, like the male of most breeds of dairy cattle, is a dangerous animal, and must be kept confined in a strong pen. The bull was on my uncle’s farm on the banks of the River Dee in North Wales. The bull could always be heard crashing about in his stall, knocking the steel bars, kicking and bellowing. The heifer (young female) could only be brought to him for fertilisation by confining her in a narrow passage, too narrow for the bull, and then raising the iron gate between the bull and the heifer. It seemed to me a sad and savage procedure. Yet he had been a calf once, in a field under the sky. His ancestors roamed freely in herds. Do the scents on the wind remind him of these things?"

Analysis

In the poem ‘Friesian Bull’, Gillian Clarke describes the bull’s life in captivity. Despite the words ‘Friesian’ or ‘bull’ not appearing in the poem itself, Clarke still manages to convey a vivid sense of the animal throughout the poem through a number of ways.

Clarke repetitively uses the personal pronoun ‘he’ to describe the Friesian bull. The first line of the poem: ‘He blunders through the last dream’, which starts with ‘he’, makes the reader assume immediately that the subject is the bull. Furthermore, the word ‘blunders’ is also associated with bulls; they seem clumsy and violent.

Another use of ‘he’ is on line 11 and 12, ‘He knows / the sweet smell of a heifer’s fear’. Clarke avoids having to use the word ‘bull’ by using ‘heifer’ and describes the heifer’s actions. Since a Friesian bull is supposedly out of control and locked up, the readers would be able to conjure up an image of a frightened heifer, on its way to mate with the bull. Thus, without having to state what creature was described, the reader is able to feel the presence of the bull by interpreting the animal’s movements and the reaction’s of other animals.

Another way that Clarke conveys a vivid sense of the bull is through the many physical descriptions, which allows the readers to picture the bull and its surroundings. For example, ‘A froth of slobbered hay droops / from the stippled muzzle.’ The ‘slobbered hay’ shows that the bull is messy and the word ‘froth’ may describe a ruminant animal, regurgitating and chewing its food so many times that its turned frothy. In the next line, Clarke describes the bull again: ‘In the slow / rolling mass of his skull his eyes / surface like fish bellies’. The ‘slow rolling mass of his skull’ suggests that the bull is very large as ‘mass’ conveys something heavy and so ‘slow rolling mass’ creates a sense of a bloated animal so big that it movea slowly. Furthermore, the sentence covers three lines of the first stanza, creating a strong presence of the bull in the poem.

The last way in which Clarke conveys a vivid sense of the bull is through personifying the bull, making him reminisce and have feelings. This allows the readers to sympathise with the bull’s pains. For example, the bull has a nostalgic moment remembering his past in lines 13-17 ‘Remembered summer haysmells reach him, a trace of the herd’s freedom… The thundering speed blows up the Dee breathing of plains…’ Up until this part of the poem, the bull is only described physically and in a rather gruesome way. However, these lines allow the reader to be let into the life of the bull and tap into his emotions. The words ‘herd’s freedom’ shows the bull’s desire to be free from captivity and loneliness. This is also emphasised by ‘the thundering speed’ at which the bulls travelled, which contrasts with the Friesian bull’s current ‘slow rolling’ movements, showing the differences between its current life in captivity and his previous freedom. Finally, the last line of the poem, ‘His crazy eyes churn with their vision’ shows the bull’s reaction to his nostalgia. The word ‘churn’ describes the eyes moving possibly moving in a circular motion and ‘crazy eyes’ adds to the churning effect. This shows that bull is indeed very affected by his flashback. Clarke also uses ‘their vision’ instead of ‘his vision’, indicating that the bull craves to be with his herd again and wishes for the freedom that he no longer has.

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