The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother

That is not your mother but her body.

She leaped from our window

And fell there.  Those are not dogs

That seem to be dogs

Pulling at her.  Remember the lean hound

Running up the lane holding high

The dangling raw windpipe and lungs

Of a fox?  Now see who

Will drop on all fours at the end of the street

And come romping towards your mother,

Pulling her remains, with their lips

Lifted like a dog’s lips

Into new positions.  Protect her

And they will tear you down

As if you were more her.

They will find you every bit

As succulent as she is.  Too late

To salvage what she was.

I buried her where she fell.

You played around the grave.  We arranged

Sea-shells and big veined pebbles

Carried from Appledore

As if we were herself.  But a kind

Of hyena came aching upwind.

They dug her out.  Now they batten

Of the cornucopia

Of her body.  Even

Bite the face off her gravestone,

Gulp off the grave ornaments,

Swallow the soil.

So leave her.

Let her be their soils.  Go wrap

Your head in the snowy rivers

Of the Brooks Range.  Cover

Your eyes with the writhing airs

Off Nullabar Plains.  Let them

Jerk their tail stumps, bristle and vomit

Over their symposia

Think her better

Spread with holy care on a high grid

For vultures

To take back to the sun.  Imagine

These bone-crushing mouths the mouths

That labour for the beetle

Will roll her back into the sun.