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HATHOR

 

The gastric cavities of sacred cows

contain a mash from half-digested fields,

mixed buttercups and groundsel, pithy seeds

from strained taxonomies; and these,

like flashback tragedies or calf’s at-ease

regurgitate in moments of small peace

for the molars to reorder and refine.

Gases release, privily for the bowel,

while complex flavours, never before combined,

roll nicely on the tongue.

 

So from a crowd

in Covent Garden or Times Square, or from

the diverse groomed heads strained in a train,

rocked beneath the horizontal posters

for watches, mobile phones and lingerie,

the averted eyes of strangers recombine

and chew one’s past.  The stare is that

of melancholy angels who arbitrate

the catalogue of our cruel weaknesses:

dislike of any children but our own,

plans for which partners to betray, suborn,

for jewels and candlelight, for mansion parties

where networked in-castes trail among the glasses,

nodes hardening, synapses reinforcing

the fame of those in peril.

 

Eyes of the multitude, the teeth of Hathor,

savour what we have done, or what could do,

connoisseur of the ridiculous and sublime

picking our brain like herbage by a tree,

pricked by esters, tannins, sifting through

vocabularies of smell, the metaphors

appointing value, since without such names

for different things there is no difference,

no acuity to defer the best

while mulling the mundane, our monstrous fears

redolent of burnt olive leaves or stone

or urinous dew in may flowers,

which the sacred cow will swallow down, to taste

in the sunsets of the falcon-headed Horus

the agony of a holy grace, entombed.

   

Alan Marshfield

   

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