St Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnell
- The bud
- stands for all things,
- even 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 its 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
from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words