United States, (1927-2019)
The Devil’s Pig
- The devil’s pig cannot be killed. And you too are happy to hear it quite as happy as anyone else. Not because pigs are the most intelligent of domestic animals. Is intelligence grounds for mercy? Humans have never been certain that it is not in itself a crime. Yet they feel obligated to it, they depend on it, and so they pass laws declaring that it is a virtue. But they are still hungry. And pigs in numbers like the stars of heaven have not been fattened for their virtue but for their flesh: to bleed at the eyes, to wear the blue rind and the colorless wounds, never to know age, but to fill with the jellied waters of silence, and be sundered and pass, fiber by fiber, through the mouths of humans. But not the devil’s pig.
- Of course he is beautiful. He is reared by a family who become fond of him, and display him to visitors, and the children scratch him and ride him, and everyone says it is a pity, and when the time comes and he is held down, and the neighbor who always does the job holds the knife at the stretched throat and pushes, suddenly the neighbor is kneeling at the edge of a kite, with a glue-brush in his hand, trying to mend a gash that he himself had made, while everyone watches in silence, for it is a kite that everyone in the village loved. And the neighbor works for a long time, without a word, while the family stands over him, and at the end he bends forward and breathes on the patched place to make it whole, and then stands and gives the mended kite to the children, and goes home afterward as though he had been to a funeral all by himself.
- Sometimes the devil’s pig takes all the prizes and is the sire of a famous progeny, and a center of envy and scheming, and is stolen, and is the pretext for murder and imprisonment and despair, and is returned to his owner, and survives him, and they say he will be allowed to die of old age, but before the first sign of it he disappears, and after that no one in that part of the country trusts anyone else, day or night, for generations.
- He lives with a saint and is a model of obedience, and tramples on snakes, and is given away, but never forgotten. He rides in the truck with the others, and climbs the ramp with them, and at the top the man with the stunner sees the little dog from home running up the ramp with the pigs, and the man shuts the gate and stops the braid of backs, and picks up the little dog and takes him out and sends him home with with a pat and never sees him again.
- Can you imagine killing him? Can you envisage what it would do to you? Can you think how the devil would treat you after that your sleep,what you would hear at table, who would pray with your lips? But you do not wish to kill the devil’s pig.
- He has become the pride of the emperor, and his statue has been carved, and armies, after victories, have the right to carry his image on a banner. He fears neither fire nor water. He loves everyone. Why should he not? His master is the lord of this world.
About the Poet:
W.S. Merwin, United States, (1927-2019), was a poet. Full name, William Stanley Merwin, he wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. Merwin became poetry editor at The Nation in 1962. Besides being a prolific poet, he was a respected translator of Spanish, French, Latin and Italian literature and poetry as well as poetry from Sanskrit, Yiddish, Middle English, Japanese and Quechua.
In June 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate. Merwin received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1971 and 2009; the National Book Award for Poetry in 2005, and the Tanning Prize – one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets – as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. [DES-07/22]