Of winter-bitten wolves

I’ve just finished reading ‘Secret History’ by Donna Tartt, and although I thought it over-long and did at times think ‘oh no, not another long detailed dream’ or ‘please, not every single exchange in this conversation’, I did enjoy it and was gripped by the story and the characters. I won’t be revealing anything by saying it is about the murder of a young man by his five friends, and the reasons for and consequences of it.

At one point the group engage in a bizarre experiment to recreate a bacchanal, the frenzied and unrestrained surrender of one’s moral and ethical and civilized self to something, which in  ‘Secret History’ is wild and murderous.

I was reminded of the book when I read this sonnet by John Masefield… not that he is suggesting a bacchanalian orgy of violence, but there is somehow that thread of ruthless and unremitting force – a force of nature in the sonnet.

There are two forms of life, of which one moves,
Seeing its meat in many forms of Death,
On scales, on wings, on all the myriad hooves
Which stamp earth’s exultation in quick breath.
It rustles through the reeds in shivering fowl,
Cries over moors in curlew, glitters green
In the lynx’ eye, is fearful in the howl
Of winter-bitten wolves whose flanks are lean.
It takes dumb joy in cattle, it is fierce,
It torts the tiger’s loin, the eagle’s wings,
Its tools are claws to smite and teeth to pierce,
Arms to destroy, and coils, and poison stings;
Wherever earth is quick and life runs red
Its mark is death, its meat is something dead.