Two Atwood Poems
Jul. 8th, 2009 07:27 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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greatpoetryHere are two poems from Margaret Atwood's collection You Are Happy in the section Songs of the Transformed (also the source of "Siren Song"):
Song of the Hen's Head
After the abrupt collision
with the blade, the Word,
I rest on the wood
block, my eyes
drawn back into their blue transparent
shells like molluscs;
I contemplate the Word
while the rest of me
which was never much under
my control, which was always
inarticulate, still runs
at random through the grass, a plea
for mercy, a single flopping breast,
muttering about life
in its thickening red voice.
Feet and hands chase it, scavengers
intent on rape:
they want its treasures,
its warm rhizomes, enticing sausages,
its yellow grapes, its flesh
caves, five pounds of sweet money,
its juice and jellied tendons.
It tries to escape,
gasping through the neck, frantic.
They are welcome to it,
I contemplate the Word,
I am dispensable and peaceful.
The Word is an O,
outcry of the useless head,
pure space, empty and drastic,
the last word I said.
The word is No.
Pig Song
This is what you changed me to:
a greypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,
a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile
I have the sky, which is only half
caged, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
my song of roots and noses,
my song of dung. Madame,
this song offends you, these grunts
which you find oppressively sexual,
mistaking simple greed for lust.
I am yours. If you feed me garbage,
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.
Song of the Hen's Head
After the abrupt collision
with the blade, the Word,
I rest on the wood
block, my eyes
drawn back into their blue transparent
shells like molluscs;
I contemplate the Word
while the rest of me
which was never much under
my control, which was always
inarticulate, still runs
at random through the grass, a plea
for mercy, a single flopping breast,
muttering about life
in its thickening red voice.
Feet and hands chase it, scavengers
intent on rape:
they want its treasures,
its warm rhizomes, enticing sausages,
its yellow grapes, its flesh
caves, five pounds of sweet money,
its juice and jellied tendons.
It tries to escape,
gasping through the neck, frantic.
They are welcome to it,
I contemplate the Word,
I am dispensable and peaceful.
The Word is an O,
outcry of the useless head,
pure space, empty and drastic,
the last word I said.
The word is No.
Pig Song
This is what you changed me to:
a greypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,
a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile
I have the sky, which is only half
caged, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
my song of roots and noses,
my song of dung. Madame,
this song offends you, these grunts
which you find oppressively sexual,
mistaking simple greed for lust.
I am yours. If you feed me garbage,
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 02:51 am (UTC)but in song of the hen's head i am confused about the word rhizome in the fifth stanza. what does rhizome mean with respect to a chicken?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:50 pm (UTC)