Porkopolis

Pigs
(four ways of looking at)

• To Westacre Belle and Prestatyn Lucy

• Scrubbed pink
• They look the most naked of animals,
• Except for the coarse hair,
• Almost colorless and seen close to.
• With ears like awnings over their small eyes,
• They root with their blunt and specially
• Gristled noses, their legs almost
• Ridiculously delicate
• For all that warmth and fertility.
• Twelve or thirteen a time, is it?
• She grunts to let them know they can feed.
• Few are allowed to reach full size:
• Boiled down they make excellent lard.
• The delicate coloring
• And firmness of line
• Remind one
• Of a water color by Dürer.
• As St. John and Socrates
• Were at pains to point out:
• Nature is always
• Imitating art.
•  
• Domesticated since neolithic times
• They are still indifferent to man.
• Clumsy, sometimes bad tempered,
• They can crack a leg by rolling on it
• Or smother a litter. And those jaws,
• Like clapper boards, that open as if
• The face was falling apart,
• Can make short work of a piglet
• Or an arm.
• In Chinese ideography,
• A roof with a pig under it
• Means home.