Flying Crooked Poem by Robert Graves
Flying Crooked
The butterfly, the cabbage white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,
Yet has — who knows so well as I? —
A just sense of how not to fly:
He lurches here and here by guess
And God and hope and hopelessness.
Even the aerobatic swift
Has not his flying-crooked gift.
This was the first poem I ever loved, probably because I understood it completely on first reading it. Occasionally, we have those moments when we think to ourselves, Somebody out there truly empathises with what I am feeling... Still my favourite poem to this day, and still one of my favourite poets: as for the others, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Blake, and Benjamin Zephania are all worth a look as all three are deeply perceptive of and receptive to the human condition.
Coda - written on broccoli being consumed by cabbage white caterpillars: The caterpillar, hairy, green, Whose appetite is all too keen, Has not this honest gift, alas, And heads straight for the Brassicas.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/3/2024 2:08:04 PM # 1.0.0.1119
dreadful reading of a magnificent poem she even misread now for know and, for shame for it all- it is these non- readers who have turned off students from poetry for a lifetime. How could this be allowed!