United States, (1942-1997)
Sooey Generous
- Saint Anthony, patron of sausage makers,
- guide my pen and unkink my tongue. Of swine
- I sing, and of those who tend and slaughter them,
- of slops and wallows and fodder, of piglets
- doddering on their stilty legs, and sows
- splayed to offer burgeoned teat to sucklers,
- and the four to five tons of manure
- a pig (that ambling buffet) reinvests
- in the soil each year; of truffle dowsers
- and crunchers of chestnuts and acorns I sing.
- In medieval Naples, each household
- kept a pig on a twenty-four-foot tether,
- rope enough that the hooved Hoover could
- scour the domain, whereas in Rome
- pigs foraged the streets haunted today by
- rat-thin cats, tendons with fur. In Paris
- in those years the langueyers, the “tonguers,”
- or meat inspectors, lifted a pig’s tongue
- to look for white ulcers, since the comely
- pig in spoiled condition could poison
- a family. Indeed the Buddha died
- from eating spoiled pork, vegetarians
- I know like to insist, raising the stakes
- from wrong to fatal, gleefully. Perhaps
- you’ve read the bumper sticker too: A Heart
- Attack Is God’s Revenge for Eating His
- Little Friends. Two major religions
- prohibit eating pork. Both creeds were forged
- in deserts, and the site-specific pig,
- who detests dry mud, has never mixed well
- with nomads or vice versa. Since a pig
- eats everything, just as the cuisines that
- sanctify the pig discard no fragment
- of it, it makes sense to eat it whole hog
- or shun it altogether, since to eat
- or not to eat is sacral, if there’s a choice
- in the matter. To fast is not to starve.
- The thirteen ravenous, sea-queasy pigs
- Hernando de Soto loosed near Tampa
- in 1542 ate whatever
- they liked. How glad they must have been to hoove
- some soil after skidding in the slick hold
- week after dark week: a pig without sun
- on its sullied back grows skittish and glum.
- Pigs and pioneers would build America.
- Cincinnati was called Porkopolis
- in the 1830s; the hogs arrived,
- as the hunger for them had, by river,
- from which a short forced march led to slaughter.
- A new country travels on its belly,
- and manufacture starts in the barnyard:
- hide for leather and stomach for pepsin.
- In France, a farm family calls its pig
- “Monsieur.” According to a CIA
- tally early in 1978,
- the Chinese kept 280 million
- of the world’s 400 million pigs;
- perhaps all of them were called “The Chairman.”
- Emmaeus, swineherd to Odysseus,
- guarded 600 sows and their litters
- (the males slept outside), and no doubt each sow
- and piglet had its own name in that rich
- matriarchal mire. And I like to think
- that in that mild hospice future pork roasts
- fattened toward oblivion with all
- the love and dignity that husbandry
- has given up to be an industry,
- and that the meat of Emmaeus’s coddled
- porkers tasted a little sweeter for
- the graces of affection and a name.
Truffle Pigs
- None of these men, who all run truffle pigs,
- compares a truffle to itself. “Fossil
- testicles,” says one. And another: “No.
- Inky, tiny brains, smart only about
- money.” They like to say, “You get yourself
- a pig like this, you’ve got a live pension.”
- The dowsing sows sweep their flat snouts across
- the scat and leaf rot, scurf and duff, the slow
- fires of decay. They know what to ignore;
- these pigs are innocent of metaphor.
- Tumor, fetus, truffle – all God’s creatures
- jubilate to grow. Even the diffident truffle
- gives off a faint sweat from the joyful work
- of burgeoning, and by that spoor the pigs
- have learned to know them and to root them out.
Photo of the Author with a Favorite Pig
- Behind its snout like a huge button,
- like an almost clean plate, the pig
- looks candid compared to the author,
- and why not? He has a way with words,
- but the unspeakable pig, squat
- and foursquare as a bathtub,
- squints frankly. Nobody knows
- the trouble it’s seen, this rained-out
- pork roast, this ham escaped into
- its corpulent jokes, its body of work.
- The author is skinny and looks serious:
- what will he say next? The copious pig
- has every appearance of knowing,
- from his pert, coiled tail to the wispy tips
- of his edible ears, but the pig isn’t telling.
Unrelenting Flood
- Black key. White key. No,
- that’s wrong. It’s all tactile;
- it’s not the information
- of each struck key we love,
- but how the mind and leavened
- heart travel by information.
- Think how blind and near-
- blind pianists range along
- their keyboards by clambering
- over notes a sighted man
- would notice to leave out,
- by stringing it all on one
- longing, the way bee-fingered Art
- Tatum did, the way we like
- joy to arrive: in such
- unrelenting flood the only
- way we can describe it
- is by music or another
- beautiful abstraction,
- like the ray of sunlight
- in a child’s drawing
- running straight to a pig’s ear,
- tethering us all to our star.
About the Poet:
William Matthews (1942-1997), was a U.S. poet and essayist, born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. Matthews earned a BA from Yale University and an MA from the University of North Carolina.
Matthews held various academic positions at institutions including Wells College, Cornell University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Washington. At the time of his death he was a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at New York’s City College.
During his lifetime he published eleven books of poetry and two posthumous collections were also issued. Much of Matthews’s poetry explores the themes of life cycles, the passage of time, and the nature of human consciousness and human foibles. He also often focuses on his particular enthusiasms: jazz music, basketball, and his children. [DES-01/12]
Editor’s Note:
The poet Diann Blakely called William Matthews to my attention. Blakely was a student of Matthews, and he remained her mentor as her writing career began.
Ooh, I’m so mad! I thought the name ‘Sooey Generous’ was my incredibly clever creation but I see there’s already a poem with that title above. I just went out and got sooeygenerous@somedomain.com, though, so who’s laughing now?
Yea, sorry, Patrisko… That phrase spelled that way has been bumping around since long before the internet. But that does not make you any less clever, for sure. Independent invention counts for a lot. I hope you enjoy your email address, though it will require some spelling out and explanation when you give it out verbally. I’ll toast your cleverness with a single malt this weekend. Thanks for visiting Porkopolis. Root on!