A fundamental poem.
We go on, looking forward.
Andrew
On 9 February 2014 06:50, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The Excrement Poem
> December 18, 2002
> by Maxine Kumin
> It is done by us all, as God disposes, from
> the least cast of worm to what must have been
> in the case of the brontosaur, say, spoor
> of considerable heft, something awesome.
>
> We eat, we evacuate, survivors that we are.
> I think these things each morning with shovel
> and rake, drawing the risen brown buns
> toward me, fresh from the horse oven, as it were,
>
> or culling the alfalfa-green ones, expelled
> in a state of ooze, through the sawdust bed
> to take a serviceable form, as putty does,
> so as to lift out entire from the stall.
>
> And wheeling to it, storming up the slope,
> I think of the angle of repose the manure
> pile assumes, how sparrows come to pick
> the redelivered grain, how inky-cap
>
> coprinous mushrooms spring up in a downpour.
> I think of what drops from us and must then
> be moved to make way for the next and next.
> However much we stain the world, spatter
>
> it with our leavings, make stenches, defile
> the great formal oceans with what leaks down,
> trundling off today's last barrowful,
> I honor shit for saying: We go on.
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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