|
The bud
Stands for all things,
Even for those things that don’t flower,
For everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing,
Though sometimes it is necessary
To reteach a thing its loveliness,
To put a hand on the brow
Of the flower,
And retell it in words and in touch,
It is lovely
Until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
-- Galway Kinnell
|
