Poetry Performance

This year Broadford & Mead pupils joined together to perform a poem for the Harold Hill Poetry Performance. The theme of the week was 'Animals' and their poem was about the hyena. A strange, ragged animal of the plains, it has a poor reputation. However the children bought the creature to life brilliantly with their physical expressions and clear voices.

I loved the idea of a golden meal. It sounds delicious, but really it means the lion is dead.

Sienna - Broadford

I didn't like the hyena. He hides in darkness and doesn't like to attack unless you are weak. That's not very fair.

Ethan - Broadford

Performing with Broadford was great fun. We had to rehearse together twice this week and it was good working with children we don't normally see. 

James - Mead

Hyena

By Edwin Morgan

I am waiting for you.

I have been travelling all morning through the bush and not eaten. 

I am lying at the edge of the bush on a dusty path that leads from the burnt-out kraal. 

I am panting, it is midday, I found no water-hole. 

I am very fierce without food and although my eyes are screwed to slits against the sun you must believe I am prepared to spring. 

What do you think of me? 

I have a rough coat like Africa. 

I am crafty with dark spots like the bush-tufted plains of Africa. 

I sprawl as a shaggy bundle of gathered energy like Africa sprawling in its waters. 

I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger. I hunch my shoulders. 

I eat the dead. 

Do you like my song? 

When the moon pours hard and cold on the veldt I sing, and I am the slave of darkness. 

Over the stone walls and the mud walls and the ruined places and the owls, the moonlight falls. 

I sniff a broken drum. I bristle. My pelt is silver. 

I howl my song to the moon – up it goes. 

Would you meet me there in the waste places? 

 It is said I am a good match 

for a dead lion. I put my muzzle 

at his golden flanks, and tear. He

is my golden supper, but my tastes are easy. 

I have a crowd of fangs, and I use them. 

Oh and my tongue – do you like me 

when it comes lolling out over my jaw very long, and I am laughing? 

I am not laughing. 

But I am not snarling either, only panting in the sun, showing you what I grip carrion with. 

I am waiting for the foot to slide, 

for the heart to seize, 

for the leaping sinews to go slack, 

for the fight to the death to be fought to the death, 

for a glazing eye and the rumour of blood. 

I am crouching in my dry shadows till you are ready for me. 

My place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.