Bill Smith
Five Bullocks
Bogged down and earmarked under the whole winter
they just got randier, they lurched
up and buckled concave only to falter
back down into the knee-deep mud, like thoughts.
They cleaned out the hay-trough,
then marched slowly away to lick at shitty buckets,
oil-cans and dead twigs. Nights, when the wind shook
the fence, they relapsed to mere sound,
the wheeze and squelch of settling into the dark.
*
The coldest dawns and she was up and carrying
the shears across the frozen ground,
the twinkling lawn, the iced birch, and bending
to clip the grass for them, who laid no claim,
letting each fat, slavering tongue
take up the cuttings from her lined, open palm.
Until at last she turned, followed by living
doomed eyes, and walked back in, and sang,
bitten through with cold and flushed with giving
*
In spring the high brown door of the cattle-box
banged shut on them, and we wandered
along the vacant fence, and knew to ask
nothing of simple hunger or pure pity,
or where we have inherited
these locks and knives, these dreams of charity.
Page(s) 44-5
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