The Bull Moses

A hoist up and I could lean over The upper edge of the high half-door, My left foot ledged on the hinge, and look in at the byre’s Blaze of darkness: a sudden shut-eyed look Backward into the head. Blackness is depth Beyond star. But the warm weight of his breathing, The ammoniac reek of his litter, the hotly-tongued Mash of his cud, steamed against me. Then, slowly, as onto the mind’s eye – The brow like masonry, the deep-keeled neck: Something come up there onto the brink of the gulf, Hadn’t heard of the world, too deep in itself to be called to, Stood in sleep. He would swing his muzzle at a fly But the square of sky where I hung, shouting, waving, Was nothing to him; nothing of our light Fond any reflection in him. Each dusk the farmer led him Down to the pond to drink and smell the air, And he took no pace but the farmer Led him to take it, as if he knew nothing Of the ages and continents of his fathers, Shut, while he wombed, to a dark shed And steps between his door and the duckpond; The weight of the sun and the moon and the world hammered To a ring of brass through his nostrils. He would raise His streaming muzzle and look out over the meadows, But the grasses whispered nothing awake, the fetch Of the distance drew nothing to momentum In the locked black of his powers. He came strolling gently back, Paused neither toward the pig-pens on his right, Nor toward the cow-byres on his left: something Deliberate in his leisure, some beheld the future Founding in his quiet. I kept the door wide, Closed it after him and pushed the bolt.

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The Bull Moses - meaning Summary

Contained, Ancient Animal Power

The poem recalls a speaker watching a farm bull whose physical presence seems vast, ancient, and inwardly sealed. Though controlled by a farmer and confined to a routine, the animal appears untouched by human calls, landscape, or ordinary time. Its quietness suggests immense, unrealized force rather than passivity. The final act of bolting the door leaves the speaker confronting both the bull's containment and the power held behind it.

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