Ted Hughes

　　Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whites

　　Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy,

　　A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up,

　　Standing in dunged straw

　　Under cobwebby beams, near the mud wall,

　　Half of him legs,

　　Shining-eyed, requiring nothing more

　　But that mother's milk come back often.

　　Everything else is in order, just as it is.

　　Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment.

　　This is just as he wants it.

　　A little at a time, of each new thing, is best.

　　Too much and too sudden is too frightening -

　　When I block the light, a bulk from space,

　　To let him in to his mother for a suck,

　　He bolts a yard or two, then freezes,

　　Staring from every hair in all directions,

　　Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion,

　　A little syllogism

　　With a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God's thumb.

　　You see all his hopes bustling

　　As he reaches between the worn rails towards

　　The topheavy oven of his mother.

　　He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue -

　　What did cattle ever find here

　　To make this dear little fellow

　　So eager to prepare himself?

　　He is already in the race, and quivering to win -

　　His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerks

　　In the elbowing push of his plans.

　　Hungry people are getting hungrier,

　　Butchers developing expertise and markets,

　　But he just wobbles his tail - and glistens

　　Within his dapper profile

　　Unaware of how his whole lineage

　　Has been tied up.

　　He shivers for feel of the world licking his side.

　　He is like an ember - one glow

　　Of lighting himself up

　　With the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening.

　　Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,

　　To be present at the grass,

　　To be free on the surface of such a wideness,

　　To find himself himself. To stand. To moo.