They Are The Last

for Beverly

Behind her tongue / with its language of grass / and passion for salt, / behind the heavy tongue / deft nevertheless / as a blind man’s hand, / a cow in good health chews / approximately fifty times / before re-swallowing the cud. // It appears the animals / Beverly / are emigrating: their America / the constellations in the sky: / Lizard, Lion, Great Bear, / Ram, Bull, Crow, / Hare... / Perhaps the more prudent / like the agouti / have chosen the milky way. // Put your ear to her flank / and you will hear / the tide of her four stomachs. / Her second, like a net, / has the name of a constellation: / Reticulum. Her third, / the Psalterium, is like / the pages of a book. // When she falls sick / and lacks the will to chew / her four stomachs fall / silent as a hive in winter. / Each year more animals depart. // Only pets and carcasses remain, / and the carcasses living or dead / are from birth / ineluctably and invisibly / turned into meat. / ‘I believe it’s completely feasible,’ / said Bob Rust / of Iowa State University, / ‘to specifically design / an animal for hamburger.’ // Elsewhere / the animals of the poor / die with the poor / from protein insufficiency. // When fetched from the pastures / the cattle bring into the cool stable / the heat of the orchard / and the hot breath of wild garlic. // To clean out the cowshed / scatter a little of / the mare’s dung / it absorbs their shit / liquid as springtime / and green with grass. // And fasten them well tonight / bed them with beech leaves / Beverly / they are the last. // Now that they have gone / it is their endurance we miss. / Unlike the tree / the river or the cloud / the animals had eyes / and their glance / was permanence. // It was the same fox for ever and ever. / To kill him / was to drag him / momentarily / from the earth / of his eternity. // Flies and crows / when devouring the dead sheep / began with the eyes. / Yet the ewe / had already lambed / her permanence. // The buzzard circled / biding his everlasting time / as repeatedly / as the mountain. // Out of the single night / came the day’s look, / with its wary animal glance / to every side. // The animals flowed like their milk. / Now that they have gone / it is their endurance we miss. // The breeding sow,’ it is said, / ‘should be thought of and treated / as a valuable piece of machinery / whose function / is to pump out baby pigs’ // Yet sometimes / when you are pouring / from the white jug, / the milk / reminds me of the geese / who like dogs / guarded the house.