Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Macabre in MacawsHervey Allen
From “The Sea-islands”
A
Peter Polite says, in the live-oak trees
Were weird macabre macaws,
And ash-colored cockatoos blown overseas
From Nassau and the West Indies.
These hopped about like dead men’s thoughts
Amid the draggled Spanish moss,
Preening themselves, all at a loss;
Mewing faint caws,
And shrieking with nostalgia—
With dull screams like a child
Born with neuralgia.
And this seems true to me,
Fitting the landscape’s drab grotesquery.