Saint Francis and the Sow

My favorite book of poetry has to be 
A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell.
He gave a poetry reading when I was a
student at Meredith. He was a funny,
dry-humored old man who obviously still
delighted in his own poetry. It was
evident in the way he read it, as though
it were alive. This is one of my favorites:


Saint Francis and the Sow 

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and
        blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
                                           Galway Kinnell