Naming the Animals

Having commanded Adam to bestow

Names upon all the creatures, God withdrew

To empyrean palaces of blue

That warm and windless morning long ago,

And seemed to take no notice of the vexed

Look on the young man's face as he took thought

Of all the miracles the Lord had wrought,

Now to be labelled, dubbed, yclept, indexed.

Before an addled mind and puddled brow,

The feathered nation and the finny prey

Passed by; there went biped and quadruped.

Adam looked forth with bottomless dismay

Into the tragic eyes of his first cow,

And shyly ventured, "Thou shalt be called 'Fred.' "

Copyright Credit: "Naming the Animals" from Collected Later Poems by Anthony Hecht, copyright © 2003 by Anthony Hecht. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.