Beastie

BEASTIE

Who brands the beast a beast? A swine

A swine? We sat, us sat alone,

Alone in our laze, our lumbering wattles,

Waddling and wallowing, wasting the day—

Daydreams daubing our dusky eyes,

Eyes darkly dissecting us, dim all the while

While whispering wildly their witless sounds,

Sounds that were stamping us, splitting our skin.

Skin and scale, rolling skeins of flesh,

Flesh that they felt was foul and strange.

Strangers they stayed, no sentiment,

Meant poison and pain, their plans for the free.

Free of fear, us frittered on the lake-stones.

“Lake of the luses, those lost and turbulent.”

Turbulent were our tusks; torpid were our ways--

Our ways damned in the dawn, we deemed the waters wrong.

Wrong the arrow winged that wounded our heart,

Heartless were he who heaved our body

Bodily to the beach, having breached our hope.

Hope in our heft was hooked by the stabbing blades;

Blades and their boar-spears broke us--the wave-rider.

Riding our ruin, the rivals called to battle,

Battle horns blowing, boasting their hero

Heroically hellward, hurtled into the mere.

Mere mercy a mummery, removed from our home,

Home not here, we “horror” gone, we “horror” bled.

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