Our insides are not awfully different:
Like a tight sweater the skin pulls over the head;
A slit, and the entrails bulge,
Quite clean! I had imagined them bloody.
And how familiar their appearance:
Sausages never disgusted us before
So why should they now in the raw?
Not at all imagining themselves in the nibbled-at position,
A chicken pecks cosily at lean
And a cat chews a piece of fat.
Of course, by now there is no resemblance anymore
To a goat; more like a meat market:
The behind has turned into steaks
And all the other parts now have culinary names.
The gross butcher with small eyes and a stupid forehead
Starts hosing away the pools of blood,
And the expression on his face slowly changes
From Eternal Destroyer to haggling merchant.
Now the buyers in procession march
Joyfully to market
As they never do when relatives die,
For they know it would be ridiculous,
Even though unskinned he looks like us,
To mourn a goat.
And besides there is nothing to mourn;
Certainly not his death
While he cooks in peace in various kitchens,
Nor his life when he leapt from rock to rock.
And then he ba-a-a-d and died:
So let us be as joyful as he was,
Eating our goat stew,
Making the movement of dancing and the noise of singing,
Taking each others’ bodies in our arms,
And then filing simply off to bed.
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