United States, (1924-2014)
Brueghel’s Pig
- the world runs
- with a knife stuck through its hide
- a wedge sliced from its back
Editor’s Note:
Peters is referring to the pig in the painting “The Land of Cockaigne” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
Gyp, My Loving Big Black Pig: An Acrostic Poem
- Gyp goes with me everywhere:
- You’ll find him in church on Sunday
- Pillowed on clean straw, to the east of the alter
- Muffling his wiffles, reserving grunts of pleasure,
- Yeasty eructations, for the noisier hymns and carols.
- Lively and contented, wiggling his quirky tail
- Over coombes and vallies, he trots behind the
- Vicar as he visits his parishioners—
- In house, in cot, in glebe and pasture.
- Never once despoiling a humble hearth-stone.
- Glad to be sociable, he jiggles his globular testes.
- Brushing a floppy ear means he wants a good scratching.
- In storm, in sun, the elements ne’er dissuade him:
- Gloriously he wallows in the finest muck-holes
- Believing he is in Paradise, awash in tarry ichor.
- Later I must scrub him and oil his hide with suet.
- After that we’ll take our tea with good Dorothy Dinglett.
- Coarse he is outside ’tis true, but within he’s all refinement.
- Know, ye cynics, and be warned: and model your own deportment.
- Pig-wise. Gyp-wise. You’ll surely feel an improvement
- In manners as well as morals. And when you next devour pork
- Grant a special whiff of thanks to Black Gyp and his tribe.
Editor’s Note:
Peters was especially interested in narrative, or “persona” poetry. Writing from the point of view of historical figures, he took excursions into the psyches of a vast gallery of historical eccentrics.
In the poem above, Gyp was a huge black pig and the pet of Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875), an Anglican clergyman and Vicar of Morwenstow in the Diocese of Exeter.
Known as Stephen Hawker or “Parson Hawker”, he was also a poet, antiquarian of Cornwall, and was known to his parishioners as something of an eccentric. Gyp, was often invited into church, along with Hawker’s nine cats, for Sunday services.
Pig-family Game
- I was the sow, she was the boar.
- Six kitchen chairs for a pen.
- We put on winter coats and grunted.
- I lay on my side, coat open
- and birthed six pigs.
- Only one was runted. Six squirts,
- minimal pain, minimal swelling.
- I peeled the after-births,
- then nudged the piglets into standing.
- Boar was in a corner plowing up edible roots.
- Sow ate the placentas.
- The piglets yanked and nuzzled her teats.
- Sow-milk ran, her ovaries tingled.
- There was froth on her mouth,
- in the black juicy loam of the pen.
The Sow’s Head
(for James Wright)
- The day was like pewter.
- The gray lake a coat
- open at the throat. The border
- of trees — frayed mantle collar,
- hairs, evergreen. The sky dun.
- Chilling breeze. Hem of winter.
- I passed the iodine-colored brook
- hard waters open
- the weight of the sow’s head
- an ache from shoulder to waist,
- the crook of my elbow numb.
- Juices seeping through
- the wrapping paper.
- I was wrong to take it.
- There were meals in it.
- I would, dad said, assist
- with slaughter, scrape off
- hair, gather blood.
- I would be whipped for
- thieving from the dogs.
- I crossed ice
- which shivered, shone.
- No heads below, none;
- nor groans — only water, deep,
- and the mud beds of frogs asleep;
- not a bush quivered,
- not a stone. Snow.
- Old snow had formed
- hard swirls bone
- and planes with
- windwhipped ridges
- for walking upon;
- and beneath, in the deep,
- bass quiet, perch whirling
- fins, bluegills, sunfish,
- dim-eyed soaking heat.
- Mud would be soft down there,
- rich, tan, deeper than a man:
- silt of leeches, leaves
- tumbling in from trees,
- loon feces, mulch-thick
- mudquick, and lignite forming,
- cells rumbling, rifts.
- I knelt, chopped through
- layers of ice until
- water, pus, spilled up
- choking the wound. I widened
- the gash. Tchick! Tchick!
- Chips of ice flew.
- Water blew from the hole,
- the well, a whale, expired.
- My knees were stuck to the ice.
- I unwrapped the paper.
- The head appeared
- shorn of its beard.
- Its ears stood up, the snout
- with its Tinker Toy holes
- held blood. Its eyes were shut.
- There was grain on its mouth.
- It sat on the snow
- as though it lived below,
- leviathan come for air
- limbs and hulk
- dumb to my presence there.
- I raised the sow’s head
- by its ears. I held it
- over the hole, let it go,
- watched it sink, a glimmer
- of pink, a wink of a match
- an eyelid . . .
- A bone in my side beat.
The Butchering: Eagle River, Wisconsin
- I
- Dad told me to hold the knife
- and the pan. I heard the click
- on wood of the bullet inserted,
- rammed. Saw a flicker thrash
- in a tree beside the trough,
- saw a grain in the sow’s mouth,
- felt my guts slosh.
- “Stand back,” dad said.
- Waffled snow track
- pressed by his boots and mine.
- Blood and foam. “Keep the knife
- sharp, son, and hold the pan.”
- One of us had shuffled,
- tramped a design,
- feet near the jackpine.
- “She’ll bleed slow.
- Catch all the blood you can.”
- A rose unfolded, froze.
- “Can’t we wait?” I said.
- “It should turn warmer.”
- Spark, spark buzzing
- in the dark.
- “It’s time,” dad said, and waited.
- II
- Bless all this beauty! preacher
- had exclaimed; all sin and beauty
- in this world! Beast and innocent!
- Fistbones gripped the foreshortened
- pulpit rim. Thick glasses drove
- his furious pupils in.
- II
- Dad brought the rifle to the skull.
- The sow’s nose plunged into the swill,
- the tips of her white tallow ears as well.
- Splunk! Straight through the brain, suet
- and shell. Stunned! Discharge of food,
- bran. Twitch of an ear. Potato, carrot,
- turnip slab. “Quick. The knife, the pan.”
- He sliced the throat.
- The eye closed over.
- Hairy ears stood up, collapsed.
- Her blood soured into gelatin.
- She had begun to shit.
- IV
- We dragged her
- to the block and tackle rig.
- We tied her tendons, raised her,
- sloshed her up and down.
- We shaved her hair,
- spun her around, cut off
- her feet and knuckles,
- hacked off her head,
- slashed her belly
- from asshole down through
- bleached fat throat.
- Jewels spilled out
- crotches of arteries
- fluids danced and ran.
- We hoisted her
- out of dog reach
- dumped her entrails
- in the snow
- left the head
- for the dogs to eat —
- my mother disliked head-meat.
- The liver, steaming monochrome,
- quivered with eyes.
- We took it home.
- V
- I went to my room.
- Tongues licked my neck.
- I spread my arms,
- threw back my head.
- The tendons of a heel
- snapped.
- What had I lost?
- bit bridle rage?
- Preacher in his pulpit
- fiddling, vestments aflame.
- He, blazing, stepping down
- to me. Hot piss came.
- I knelt on the floor,
- bent over, head in arms.
- Piss washed down, more.
- I clasped my loins,
- arm crossed over arm.
- And I cried
- loving my guts,
- O vulnerable guts,
- guts of creatures.
Lines on an English Butcher-Shop Window
(Christmas 1966)
- O beautiful severed head of hog
- O skewered lamb-throat, marble eye of
- duck, O meadow-freshened hare
- suspended
- O lovely unplucked pheasant
- ripening in the gloom
- O gracious suckling pig upended
- O twisted tail erect
- and pinkish goudged-out hole
- O graceful nub of sow tit, merry xylophone
- of fractured ribs
- O rib ends smarting where the saw
- has severed you
- O pleasant rind of fat and rosy spume
- along the incision sliced
- from genitals to snout
- O livers tumbling, O clattering
- jewel of pancreas and
- ligaments of stomach wall
- O golden brains emplattered
- O calf-groin hacked in two
- O carcass spiked, with legs
- encased and tied about
- with paper, hanging on the wall
- O sheep form, severed shoulders,
- O ham string of ox,
- O whitening lyre,
- O steer loin pierced, O haunch,
- O ribeage disembowelled
- O glorious trays and juices, heaps of
- lambhearts, chicken livers,
- gizzards, claws
- I see you all!
The Misanthropist: in Imitation of the Ancient Chinese
- I’d like to build a house
- of bacon strips
- suspended from legbones
- wired and needled together.
- In hot weather the house
- will smell delicious.
- In winter the wind
- will play strong music
- on the bones.
- On festival days
- I’ll hang pig bladders
- from the rafters, and beat them.
- To visit me
- you’ll have to stand outside the door
- and go oink, oink.
THE DISEASES OF SWINE
- Hog cholera (swine fever)
- rages the world over.
- Infected pork is hazardous.
- Erysipelas causes lesions,
- unthriftiness,
- necrosis and arthritis.
- Gastroenteritis attacks new piglets.
- Haemorrhagic dysentery
- is an infectious virus.
- Brucellosis maims
- the spinal cord and testes.
- Treatment is ineffective.
- Beware leptospirosis,
- swine pox and influenza,
- ictero-anemia and rhinitis.
- Soap your swine,
- nourish them well.
- Their diseases
- do kill humans.
Towards Gaza
- Again,
- this is the same road
- winding past
- quartz and lignite
- starved aspens
- crippled by glaciers.
- I remember it,
- so it is today
- nothing
- to reason about, grunt over
- hog-wallowing chestnuts
- acorns, seeds.
- These trails are the same
- even the first time.
- I taste acid.
- My eye bleeds.
- A scrap of life
- conquers death, says Gide.
- Go passive, weed out
- the generals.
- Imbed burrs, stroke
- the palomino’s throat
- chop a boar’s tongue
- slash off a bear’s tail.
- Clamber towards Gaza.
About the Poet
Robert Louis Peters, United States, (1924-2014) was a poet, critic, scholar, playwright, editor, and actor. He held a Ph.D. in Victorian literature and his poetry career began in 1967 when his young son died unexpectedly. The book of poetry, Songs for a Son, and was published in 1967 and it still remains in print.
Peters was a prolific poet, having publishing over thirty books of poems. His poetry covers a wide range of themes and forms, from intensely personal or “persona” works and excursions into the psyches of a vast gallery of historical eccentrics.
He also adapted some of his poetry for theatrical presentation and performing these around the United States. Peters was also an important critic of contemporary American poetry with published books of controversial criticism assessing hundreds of contemporary poets and critics.
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