Book: I Saw a Fiery Peacock | Inside the Mind of Isadora

2015©photography by Isadora

Poem – I Saw A Peacock with a Fiery Tale

A well-known folk poem from 17th century England.
It’s a form of trick verse.

Read it straight forward manner and it sounds interesting surreal:

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail
I saw a cloud with ivy circled around
I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground
I saw an ant swallow up a whale
I saw a raging sea brimful of ale
I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep
I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep
I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a house as big as the moon and higher
I saw the sun even in the midst of night
I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight

©tara books – text: anonymous

2015©photography by Isadora

But, if the lines are broken up in the middle, everything falls into place.
I saw a peacock
with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet
drop down hail
I saw a cloud
with ivy circled around
I saw a sturdy oak

In this version of the classic poem language, art and design

come to play with these inversions.

They reveal and conceal, brilliantly mirroring the shifting ways