Friday, April 25, 2008




Crows on the Campus

by

Clarice Short



Why those dark birds

Should bring the snowy country to us now

By cawing noisily through tufted trees

I cannot know. These academic groves

Are barren of all fruit; even the squirrels

Because of this year’s dearth of hackberries

Have nibbled bare the lesser limbs of elms.


Our crops are scanty. A chance grain of thought

May fall in fertile mind, but its strange flower

Is slow maturing. Here watching the snow

I do not understand why crows should come

To add their hunger to our hollowness.


March 24, 1963

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