MAMMALS
A fair number of my poems are about animals. They are either compassionate poems about the lot of domestic animals or else they are tinged with magic and touch common chords with the Herne poems. I believe that man has a contract with the animals he has domesticated. He will eventually steal their milk or wool and eat their flesh. I believe that in return he owes the animals quality of life. I have kept pigs that were allowed to wander down to the creek for a wallow and had tree stumps to scratch on. They were fed well and given shelter. I was able to slaughter them without guilt. Farmers keep herd animals, yet deny them the comfort of the herd structure. Calves are raised on a bucket rather than on their natural mother and young bulls are kept in a herd of only other young bulls. Lambs are taken from their mothers with no regard to the grief of either ewes or lambs. In the worst scenarios chickens, pigs and even cattle are imprisoned in close confinement. Man is not honouring his contract. We even interfere with their breeding so that we produce races of monsters like pouting pigeons and dumpy wool laden sheep and toy dogs that are descended from wolves. I have tried to breed wildness back into my own sheep. I have bred for genes that give them self-shedding wool, horns in both sexes, coloured wool and long legs.
Aurochs
The Dordogne, France: Lascaux's Prehistoric Cave Paintings - YouTube
I want to paint an aurochs in the wild and tangled wood
As he steaming in the shafts of shade and shifting sunlight stood.
His sweeping, wide arched, black-tipped horns embrace
His briar strewn, thorn thicket, fernbrake hiding place.
To safe-crèched calves his lowing cows softly keen,
Wreathed in snowy bramble flowers and rose-red eglantine.
And when the white fanged wolves the patriarch bring to bay
And the old bull stumbles to his knees and slumps in death,
There is glory and honour in the gory jugular spray
That spraints the forest soil and bubbles from his final breath.
When his bones are stripped and the sated pack is gone,
The grieving herd gathers on the blood-soaked, trampled ground,
Sniffs with writhing lips each remnant shard of horn or bone,
Anoints the sacrificial spot with offerings of piss and dung,
And letting him not leave this earth unnoticed nor unsung,
Bellows, filling all the solemn wood with bugled sound.
Bull Leapers of Knossos
Bull Leaping
Against an archaic Aegean turquoise sky
A glorious bull in frescoed ochre leaps,
Frozen mid-flight with outflung horns and hooves,
A brick red aurochs with a sprung arched back.
Three young acrobats are snapped in the air,
Caught like garden fairies on smoked glass,
Forever graceful, arrogant, lissome, young.
One girl in supple leather boots and mini-kilt
Seems almost impaled by the rampant bull,
Her ivory breasts pressing the skin white horns.
But she uses his vast impetus to her own avail,
As convulsively he flexes the muscles
Of his great veined and dewlapped neck
And hurls her high sailing over his mighty head.
On the bull’s broad withers a handsome youth,
Sun-bronzed, sardonic, with black ringlets,
Does bounding somersaults and dismounts
Into the outstretched confident arms
Of the tall, slim, bare breasted girl.
Charlemagne
Our big, soft, lovable, laid-back bull.
Great blond, amiable, ambling giant
Bringing up the rear behind his cows
In stately, plodding, royal progress –
Charlemagne, the Charolais king.
If you dared, you could offer him grass,
Let the rough, rasping tongue caress,
Smell the warm, moist emanation
From sweet breathed lungs and bovine gut.
You could scratch his flanks or pleated throat
As he rolled back one white eye to watch.
You were sharply aware of the sturdy horns,
The chest-stabbing, gut-piercing, eye-gouging,
Skewer you like a shish-kebab, sharp horns
And the shrug of muscles under his hide.
You knew he could push a car backwards
Through a hedge, obliterate a farmyard gate.
Yet he placid stood, by man and dog unfazed,
Lowered his mighty head and gently grazed.
The long acre by the verge was electric fenced.
The grass there lushly long, the clover sweet.
In the paddock proper the grass was sparse.
The hungry cattle eyed the roadside fare.
Across the way the yearling Frisian bulls
Lined the fence to stare like dominoes,
Serenading the cows with basso profundo roars
And falsetto yodeling of discordant squeaks.
Charlemagne declared the roadside out of bounds
And all obeyed and left the tempting grass ungrazed,
All save the bull’s own mother, the dowager queen,
Who sidled she thought unnoticed out the gate.
A metamorphosis of volcanic rage!
The once docile bull snorted like a walrus,
Thundered down the trembling paddock,
Lowered his head like a bulldozer blade,
Sweeping up the indignant cow with his horns
And trundled her home like a wheelbarrow.
He went down on his great gnarled knees
And sweeping his horns from side to side,
Gouged out great divots of earth,
Declaring his dominion and domain,
Marking his turf.
Chianina
In Marciano we dined like kings.
Coffee to die for, rich and black.
Wine red as blood in river flood.
Gorgonzola and prosciutto.
Biftecca de vitello,
Succulent morsels of milk fed veal.
I was happy until chianina.
The Umbrian countryside uplifts the heart,
A pied piper’s patchwork quilt
Of verdant vineyard, grey-green olive grove,
The yellow flames of a sunflower field,
Resinous round headed Roman pines,
The tall and twisted cypresses.
I was happy until chianina.
The Gubbio townscape is something else,
Dovetailed matrices of burnt brick,
Undulations of orange tiles,
Yellow stucco and warm brown stone,
Multi-faceted walls and towers
Interlocked and interfaced.
I was happy until chianina.
In the gloomy shippens and dark byres
The snow white chianina cattle stand
With their soft brown pensive eyes,
Long Madonna lashes and warm breath.
They are chained in rows side by side.
Their unused hooves are grossly overgrown.
I was happy until chianina.
M
The Branding Iron
I take out my sharp pencil
And a sheet of blank cartridge paper
And consider what to draw.
In the still-life class is a box of things,
Inanimate or once-animate, like bones,
But all are dead save the branding-iron.
This is still live, still powerful, still cruel.
I take up my pencil
But I can not sketch the hair singed
Nor draw the flesh seared,
Nor delineate the pain.
But I can still smell the stench,
Still hear the bellow of agony,
Still see the ox eyes rolling white.
The brand is a capital M and bar.
The bar is simply to avoid confusion
With an upside down W.
Tell that to the bull!
His perfect body is marred,
Scarred with a brand of ownership.
When the wild aurochs outfoxed
The ravening wolf or tiger,
He was one tiny increment towards uplift,
One small step to enlightenment.
But now all bulls bear the brand of man.
We have bar-coded their hides.
We have cancelled their visas to Nirvana.
We have stolen their birthright and condemned them
To evolutionary purgatory.
So I return the iron to its box,
Consider my chewed pencil
And the empty sheet of paper.
Rounding Up Sheep.
To round up sheep, anticipate,
Look them in the eye, make them beware.
Calculate the angle of their escape,
Adjust your co-ordinates,
Head them off at the pass.
Remember there’s one of you
And only one of them – the herd.
Show no indecision, hold your line.
Make like an owl’s eye butterfly;
Do the unfurled sun bittern thing.
They do not know how slow you are;
What a weak and paltry thing is man;
How they could stot and pronk,
Outleap your stretching arms
And scatter to all compass points
In a starburst of flashing hooves.
They come over the crest of the hill,
And edge the skyline
Like Zulu warriors at Rorke’s Drift.
We are down to one last bullet
And one thermos of tea
When the cavalry arrives.
Bonny, the border collie
Runs silently and slinkily
In a low slung crouching gait
And all heads turn to watch,
And all eyes are riveted
On wolf the primal enemy.
Now we are two and they are one.
We hold them on an invisible leash.
We work out the geometry
And inevitably force them through the gate.
Dead Ewe
http://www.ilankelman.org/mammals.html
Some folks live in an ideal spring world
Of lollopy legged lambs and daffodils.
In my paddock lay the dead ewe.
If she had given birth to twins,
Each would have slipped out like a fish.
If it had been a lean time winter
Her singleton had not grown so large.
If she were not a first time mother,
Her vulva might have stretched enough.
Instead the over-large lamb’s head
Stuck fast, smeared red, engorged, unborn.
The tongue protruded blackish blue.
Thousands of fly eggs, primrose yellow
Encrusted every single orifice.
The tittle tattle neighbours watched
As we dragged the corpses to the offal hole,
Witnesses to their brief obsequy.
They were committed to oblivion
And the putrescence of the pit.
Only clean white lambs were left to gambol
In the field of green casino baize,
Play hop scotch among the golden daffodils.
Poinsettia
Sophie, my pointer-setter cross,
My poinsettia, flameflower, the flowing flame.
Sopie, my soft-mouthed, floppy-eared, soppy bitch.
You were a windhound outrunning a car,
Racing on the green grass verge of life.
As a young dog you were a wildfire
Ripping through life on a joyous hunt.
As an older dog you twitched in your sleep
As you coursed in your dreams
After that ever elusive rabbit,
Your pack in full cry at your heels.
Run oh run you hounds of the night,
Light up the dark reaches,
Outrun the hands of time
And the grasping fingers of old age.
One more leap Sophie
And the snowshoe hare is yours.
Eternal puppydom will be your reward
When you crunch on the sweet bones.
Suddenly you stumbled,
The flame spluttered
And gouts of black soot coughed up.
Your left front paw was caught in a trap
Of inflamed tissue.
Bone disease had seized you by the joint.
Your teeth snapped on empty air
And the rabbit raced ahead unharmed.
At a stroke your hind legs collapsed beneath you
And the rabbit disappeared into the bushes.
You tottered on your splayed frail legs
With your tumour ridden body
Whimpering and looking up at me in shame at your failure.
Don’t worry old girl, you did your best.
The vet shaves the back of your paw
And slips the sly needle into your vein.
The purple fluid rises past your heart
And drowns your bright flame.
Sonnet at Weaning Time
Past their ewes by date
To greener fields and pastures new
The stripling lambs must separate
And bid their flock and folk adieu.
The ram lamb and the wether
Go gentle to their final fate.
Theirs was not to wonder whether
To ram a dam or impregnate.
Mothers bleat now and then.
With mouths half full of grass
They grieve, but out of sight is
Out of mind. Mastitis
Causes pain but too will pass.
Hare
Hare apparent in the long grass,
The leveret crouches true to form,
Ears flattened against its skull,
Jack rabbit in a box,
Sprinter in the starting blocks.
But at first he tries disguise.
He lagomorphs into the ground,
A muted heather-feather blend.
His agouti pattern camo-coat,
A harish tweed of rye and oat.
The coursing hounds quarter the slope
And ever closer to their quarry draw.
His fearful smell is heaven sent.
He breaks on piston pumping thighs,
The baying pack in hue and cry.
His hind limbs outleap his fore,
Uncoils, recoils his flexi-spine.
High jinks on the slalom rinks,
He skeeters and skedaddles free
From the jaws of his adversity.
Quill Shake-spear
A nose by any other name
Would moistly whiffle just the same.
A lug-hole works like any ear.”
Thus spake the famous Quill Shake-spear.
But for your common garden hedgehog,
They knew they were no pig nor dog.
Much preferred the German “igel”,
Pronounced you know to rhyme with “beagle”.
For their heraldic hedgehog crest
Imperial igel was the best,
Surmounted by a thistle spined,
A wreath of holly leaves entwined.
“Urchins” y-clept in old Quill’s terms.
Now confined to echinoderms,
Companions of Oliver Twist,
Stage extra waifs from “Les Miz”.
Covered with a coat of prickles,
Constantly deprived of tickles.
Never fondled, never groomed,
Full of fleas from womb to tomb.
As creatures they are misconstrued.
Humans err about their food.
They’re fond of beetles, slugs and snails,
The garden guardians of tales.
Now please meet my Mister Tiggles.
This time nicely rhyme with “wriggles”.
An orphan urchin bottle-fed,
Tucked up in a toilet tissue bed.
Prickles still soft and uninflated,
Eyes tight shut and undilated.
By whatever name this tyke is known,
This igel in my heart has flown.
The Rat and the Terrier
I lifted up the plank in the woodshed
And Alex caught and killed the rat.
It was a scene we have replayed often.
The dog in eager tail-wag anticipation.
The rat in hunch-backed terror
Before he makes his last and desperate dash.
Possibly it is a stunt-guy stand-in rat,
But he always looks identical
With scaly, six-inch nail tail,
The same bewhiskered face
And old man’s long and yellow teeth,
Nicotine stain strain of common rat.
The rat is of course immortal.
In a few weeks or so
His scattered cells will recombine
And like a slime mould will coalesce
At first into a grey smell shadowy rat,
And then the archetype will reappear
Under the chicken coop or in the woodshed,
The reincarnated rat.
There is no Alexander rat, no Napoleon,
No Mozart, Michael-Angelo or Newton rat.
My dog however will not return.
A pitbull, fox terrier, blue heeler cross.
They broke the mould when he was made.
Alex is of course unique. He has a name.
Mortality is the price we pay for fame.
True to the Pack
We are a motley mongrel crew,
Human couple and our canine kith.
One is domesticated through and through,
A Dog with a capital D.
The other a Border Collie heading bitch,
A wolf in panda’s clothing.
When it is cold and dark outside,
The dog lies in front of the fire
With his pink belly medium rare.
The wolf paces and scratches at the door
And on release flies arrow true
To reclaim the night.
The dog greets strangers with his tail
A confident curl above his back.
The wolf is wary, hackles, snarls,
With her tail between her legs.
The dog may walk in the fields
Ignored by cows and sheep,
But should the wolf slink
On bent legs in the paddock,
The sheep congregate in a bunch
Like prairie schooners.
The wolf is compulsive obsessive,
Rounds up bicycles and cars,
Chases the hundred metres to the gate
And beats you back home no sweat.
The dog knows you are going to get the mail
So waits at the top of the drive and grins.
The wolf is embarrassed at affection,
Needy and confused she growls when stroked
Yet nudges your hand for more.
The dog accepts affection as his due
And speculatively eyes the couch.
One evening the wolf did not return
And in the morning answered to no call.
We found her at the foot of a pine
Where she had treed a possum
And stood on guard all night.
We shook the tree and the possum fell
Into the terrier jaws of the dog
Who stalked off proudly with his prey.
The wolf satisfied slunk home.
Flow Wolf and Dog God
He was my Flow wolF,
running between my horse's hooves,
meshed synchronized in gait.
I was his Dog goD,
his oath holder, healer, hearth keeper,
alpha male, human litter mate.
We kept the ancient truce,
obeyed the pack pact of man and dog,
bayed the night watch together
against the horrors of the wild wood.
Cheek by jowl we howled
the hound sound to the hunters' moon,
or lazed in the warm summer's afternoon.
We walked together in the sunlit day
and kept the denizens of the dark at bay,
until a rusty coughing nail pierced his throat
and the Bark craB came scuttling to throttle him
and the nose warbles garbled his growls
and blood ran from his sinuses.
His hero Dog goD could not prevail
against the cancer and the coughing nail.
I gave him the mercy blade, the coup de grace,
lowered him gently laid upon the yielding grass.
The craven raven and the Scoff foX will grin,
their grisly undertaking to begin.
The Scarab barrackS and the Work croW crews
will complete his total dismemberment,
return to earth each borrowed element.
Next