England, (b. 1930)
Pig Sonnet
- The pigs ran tiptoe through their hubbub,
- elegant, avid, boistering at the trough,
- quarrelled, were neighbourly, could laugh
- seizing fresh straw in mouthfuls, squinting up
- until they hung in the barn dumbfounded
- in a long arabesque, their stiff lashes
- painted with a little blood. There were dishes,
- pails, a plastic bag. Good pigs, the man said,
- holding a bucket of loganberry froth.
- They’ve scraped well. You’ll be wanting the blood?
- He stood like an artist at the easel,
- weight thrown back, appraising. Good clean pigs. Death
- seemed merely stupefaction: passing, absurd
- and like wax in the ears, remediable.
© M.R. Peacocke. Marginal Land. Calstock, UK: Peterloo Poets (1988).
About the Poet:
Margaret Ruth Peacocke, England, (b. 1930) [also known as Meg Peacocke or M.R. Peacocke] is an poet, children’s author and lyricist. Peacocke studied English at St Anne’s College, Oxford.
She had written poems since childhood, but it was only in her fifties that she began publishing seriously. She now has more than seven poetry books published.
After years of writing, teaching, travel, training in counselling and work in the Children’s Cancer Unit of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, she moved to a small hill farm in Cumbria where she lived for twenty five years. She now lives in Barnard Castle, County Durham. [DES-01/22]