He avoided easy quarry: possum
and squirrel, complacent carp.
He wouldn’t be caught dead
bagging coon; coon, he said,
was fickle meat—tasted like
chicken one night, the next like
poor man’s lobster. He’d never admit
being reduced to eating coon,
to be called out of his name
and into that cartoon.

It’s not surprising they could eat the mess
he made of their playground: They watched
the October hog gutted with grim fury,

a kind of love gone wrong, but oh
they adored each whiskery hock, each
ham slice brushed subterranean green.

They were eating his misery

like bad medicine meant to help them

grow. They would have done anything

not to see his hand jerk like that,

his belt hissing through the loops and around

that fist working inside the coils

like an animal gnawing, an animal

who knows freedom’s worth anything

you need to leave behind to get to it—

even your own flesh and blood.

The Camel Comes to Us from the Barbarians

This one is enormous: rough-cut,
the fur like matted felt—
and so much of it,

rising in vulgar mounds upon its back
as if the sand itself had belched
into heaven’s beard. Gods,

what malevolence! The eye a constant
rolling orb, glistening with ill intent,
yellowed, gummed with hair, more hairs

than you or I would care to count,

that eye marks every move its jailer makes

and waits for him to step too near—

one blow would cripple any man.
Another specimen stands bellowing
beneath the farthest palm. Though slighter,

it daunts equally, staked haunches
straining, muscles potent as the reek
that saturates our sun-baked marketplace.

About the larger one some purpose lurks:
Hindquarters splayed, it tugs against its ropes,
snorts, yearns its massive head and slavers

toward that godawful sound. Could
the drabber one be female, and its mate?
More monsters in our midst!

And yet . . . if these vile creatures be
like geese, or dogs, and their offspring
learn to cuddle the one

who coddles them first—why,
our fortune’s pegged for sure.
Let us display our sternest countenance,

then apportion what they most desire
according to the measure of their service.
A rare commodity, these beasts—

who cannot know

what beauty wreaks, what mountains

pity moves.

The Venus of Willendorf

Let your eye be a candle in a chamber,

your gaze a knife;

let me be blind enough

to ignite it.

— PAUL CELAN

She kneels on a workbench

strewn with clipper and trowel

to look out over the valley, red sun

still snagged on the farthest green fringe.

She’s early. Behind her

scratch the arbor’s last leaves

and a few gray birds pecking for crumbs

among the rose husks fallen to the veranda.

Arrived a week ago, one more exotic

in the stream of foreign students

invited to Herr Professor’s summer house

in the Wachau, she was taken

straight from train to tavern

to see the village miracle, unearthed

not five kilometers from this garden shed: