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Day Four
XI. THE GOAT ABATTOIR
13. An Ending
Crows looked down with centuries in them of looking.
Sweat beneath the black feather, drooping in the heat.
Dry shadowy eyes like slanted rooves of homesteads.
Hundreds of crows on the sliprails in the holding yards.
For this I give you my contempt, barren landscape,
I give you my hostile gaze, masked by a smile,
the presence of my destroyed sensitivity, rage.
It was a human scream.
Dad said, "We'll try & find some paper daisies, but I
don't think there's any left, or when we get back into town
I can buy you a chocolate. What one do you like?"
A little further out in the scrub,
the head, upper torso & forearms
of a dead joey -
hugging a cupful of flesh & sand
for a body.
I do not want to pick the paper daisies, dad.
I want the slaughterhouses to shut down.
I want to write poetry & then be gone. |
