\
(
by a thick fringe of black straw.
In
the snout
an obscene balsa-wood tongue,
and under its tail-whisk the testicles
(two nutshells) neatly
stowed, and the man inside it
becomes, when he stands, the missing member–
dismembered now, while they are
at their killing, remembered later on
when the rites begin
and such 'Pigs' devour the dead,
the great hulls squatting down on one body
after another - can you
credit me when I not only assert
but insist there is
a reason in their ravening,
in their seasonal glut a loveliness,
my dear, for all its horror?
You are the first, and by that primacy
imperiled, to hear
of these gory sacraments–
scarcely believable, yet they are so.
Do not condemn too quickly
what I shall try to explain in my next.
Meanwhile memorize
these notes I dare not preserve,
for even now a stillness from the stadium
means I must stop. Pay
our 'messenger' well and, as you love me,
destroy this. I shall
return now to my Princes,
though our next few sessions promise to be
unruly. I am quite well
and safe, so far. Next summer we may ... not ...
