Malcolm Cowley – “ernest”

 

Go forth and do what you must do!

Dry Season - ernest panorama
“Ernest” by Malcolm Cowley, from “The Dry Season”

 

Ernest

Safe is the man with blunderbuss
who stalks the hippopotamus
on Niger’s bank or scours the veldt
to rape the lion of its pelt;

but deep in peril he who sits
at home to rack his lonely wits
and there do battle , grim and blind,
against the jackals of the mind.

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