Notes for a Bestiary

(On many farms around large cities the pigs are fed on refuse from hotels and restaurants. The smallest piece of their own flesh is enough to cause a disease which renders them unmarketable.)

hotels and restaurantes comum
I hate the cunning mantis, lean, mimetic,
punning on the word prey. Overemphatic
subtlety’s distasteful. Give me
the clean transparent pig.

He’s no economist-doesn’t care a grunt
for the marginal cost of bacon. But his nicety can’t
tolerate cannibalism: he learns
his own taste, gets worms.

For man, thrusting his offal in the trusting snout,
lays a depth-charge of disease; then hangs round
as aerial convoy. Pig
perishes in smoke and fog.

The cost of bacon rises, ham is dear:
the nicety of pigs had made the poor
hungry. Warlords storm,
boards talk,
halls roar;
while man kills man and eats him as before.