God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.

But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.

near gardens tall and winding,
whilst i savoured aphotic tea.


appeared that harrowing boy,
stygian herald bringing destiny.


inside, aside! i cried, i cried,
but none there heard my call.


my path was laid out, though four-fold
it was, before i fell the fall


then awakened from my forty-winks,
to a realm so alien and queer.


and O! the p-pain of my forearm,
known only by my good man Lear.


understand, under i stood!
beneath the sky of a shadow land.


brobdingnag could not compare,
nor calormen in the sand.


time and a time and a time again,
i periled through this epic place.


met mighty men and kings of old,
and stuck leviathan in 'er face!


o weary soul, tired tired tis true.
yet to the end did i hold fast.


til i'd learn't that humble shall be first,
and the first shall inded be last.