The Heaven of Animals
Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.
Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.
To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.
For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey
May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk
Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain
At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.
-James Dickey
James Dickey’s “The Heaven of Animals” is written as a quintain. This means each stanza has five lines and a typical stress pattern. This poem also has enjambment, a sentence is split between at least two lines, as seen in the second stanza “Having no souls, they have come, / Anyway, beyond their knowing. / Their instincts wholly bloom / And they rise.”
“The Heaven of Animals” is a poem filled with imagery that describes the different versions of Heaven there can be for each animal there.
“If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.”
This describes the different landscapes each animal may have, while the fourth and fifth stanzas describe the animals themselves and what they do: “But with claws and teeth grown perfect, / More deadly than they can believe. / They stalk more silently, / And crouch on the limbs of trees”