Christine Murray’s “A Tale” works like a half-remembered dream. The speaker fixes on a huge gray bird outside on the roof, convinced it wants to eat her heart out. The line about the daisies being asleep and no one knowing adds a sense of lonely, hidden vulnerability—something small and innocent is unprotected. Then the speaker turns to a memory: chasing a lamb that galloped up the road and got away. In the second stanza, we learn the lamb escaped the butcher’s van, which makes the image sharper—it was running from death. The bird’s hunger and the lamb’s flight feel connected; both suggest being pursued or exposed to harm. The repetition gives the poem an obsessive, almost chant-like quality, as if the speaker cannot let go of either image. The mood is eerie and tender at once, mingling fear with a fragile sense of escape and survival.
A Tale — Summary
there is a huge gray bird out on the roof he wants to eat my heart out the daisies are asleep no-one knows. I chased a galloping lamb up the road remember the day it got away and galloped up the road and was gone ?
there is a huge gray bird on the roof outside he wants to eat out my heart the daisies are asleep and no-one knows. I chased a galloping lamb up the road remember the day it escaped the butcher’s van and galloped up the road.