Porkopolis

A Prodigal

• The brown enormous odor he lived by
• was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
• for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
• was plastered halfway up with glass–smooth dung.
• Light–lashed, self–righteous, above moving snouts,
• the pigs’ eyes followed him, a cheerful stare —
• even to the sow that always ate her young —
• till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
• But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
• (he hid the pints behind the two–by–fours),
• the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
• the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
• And then he thought he almost might endure
• his exile yet another year or more.
•  
• But evenings the first star came to warn.
• The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
• to shut the cows and horses in the barn
• beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
• with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
• safe and companionable as in the Ark.
• The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
• The lantern — like the sun, going away —
• laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
• Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
• he felt the bats’ uncertain staggering flight,
• his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
• touching him. But it took him a long time
• finally to make up his mind to go home.