Blackbird Archive← v10n1, Spring 2011Poetry · Volume 10, Number 1
The Quotations of Meat
It might have been the dead cow,
in dream, who said— or the Tao
te Ching— it might have been the bow
of the boat, rising plough
in a storm dark field, a spotted sow
and one barking dog? The Chairman Mao
said it— now
is a time to try the soul:
peasants planting
seed with long gray poles . . .
it might have been the dead Angus
who said, a hamburger
seems the invention of cowshit
largely drying beside mushrooms
and the brook. The dead said it. It was
a little red book.
