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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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