...all things are alive, and all things are made manifest by virture of fire.
--Ben Okri: Infinite Riches

Meaty shadows pull my tourist-curiousity

to the rusted gate, to pelt matted with rainwater,

feces, mud of clover fields--sheep, cows, goats

the lone boar--black, white, brown lumps

which hold the hills in place from Hawarden to Mold.

My Chesapeake ear beyond understanding

the Celtic twist of the tongue as the auctioneer

chants bids when farmers nose some defect

of hoof or horn, as he rattles numbers heel over end,

I see myself as Saharan herdsmen who mixes

white clay, charcoal, red and yellow oxide; who

fuses drawings of cattle to cave walls with blood

of fat, his own urine, using what streams from life

to give life. And what of the prodder who knows

the blind kick of muscular haunches, the warning

of glazed eyes swollen with raw fear; who

canes scarred rumps from pen to pen,

with a gull spins and eruption of sky; its face,

a black mask bourne on white plumes. He

becomes a Tibetian bull on a painting in Chelsea.

Becomes god-wisdom Yamantaka of cosmic radiance

wreathed in red flames.

Becomes god-killer of Yamantaka of fiery aspect:

three hungry eyes for blood, two fire-spurting horns,

rows of skulls across his blue-black head.

Shapeshifter prodder who dances to scare death

to death, to close the door to darkness

you have already entered. Livestock trucks

back into loading docks, where snouts

poke between wooden slats--the bleat, the snuffle

which senses the abbatoir whose smell

clings to touseled fur. Lured to my salt sweat

as I lean on one stall, grizzled maws nudge my pockets

for meadow grass--my empty hands as much a betrayer

as border collies and dune buggies which tighten

their circle--to bring them calm to journey's end

under the stars, as if your death were a misstep,

slip on cold tile, mix of blood and water.