What personality was contained within the pig
on the spit,
what nocturnal absence
was left
to the dark company of drunken poets,
what piggish laughter left its wide grin behind
peeling back its mask into flames?
Poet friends!
What squinting eyes have followed your feet
along an ochre bush track,
domestically picking your shoelaces,
what great hairy back tossed up the mud
which coated its sensitive skin
from the wind,
what tight squeals for getting its own way
or dominating the younger pigs,
what grateful snouts & eyes for cabbages
& potato peelings,
what trotting back legs rushed from the yard
after knocking the tray of cooling biscuits
off the window sill?
What rosy flower petal ears trembled with veins
in the sun translucent.
What pig crankiness & cantankerousness!
What anxieties & depressions of the pig!
What stress & varied interests
in butterflies & bull ants,
in flowing rivers, ten gallon drums or
houseside water tanks,
in the rocking bellies of regular cows
or giant black & white chickens,
squabbling the dust for twigs?
What a being! What a pig!
What a brute you have swallowed!
As you reflect on the open fire, with
flesh & warmth around your mouth
& your fat poetry book on your lap
used as a plate.
What personality have you devoured tonight?
The great pig is absent from your life,
as you contemplate frozen star clusters
& write of your isolations.
The lifeforce of the sentient pig has gone,
my poet friends,
& you have taken away its laughter from me,
& you have taken away the pig's cries,
& the pig's enjoyment of the seasons,
& you write of your heart's melancholy autumns,
& you say you are lonely when
the night falls,
when the dark clay tracks ring silently out
with the ghost of the pig's footfall,
& your dying voice is extinguished
in the embers,
& your inspirations fall like ash through
its ribcage.
