Poetry Saturday

Elizabeth sent me this the other day.

Grace To Be Said At The Supermarket - Howard Nemerov

That God of ours, the great Geometer,
Does something for us here, where he hath put
(if you want to put it that way) things in shape,
Compressing the little lambs in orderly cubes,
Making the roast a decent cylinder,
Fairing the tin ellipsoid of a ham,
Getting the luncheon meat anonymous
In squares and oblongs with the edges beveled
Or rounded (streamlined, maybe, for greater speed).

Praise Him, He hath conferred aesthetic distance
Upon our appetites, and on the bloody
Mess of our birthright, our unseemly need,
Imposed pure significant form. Through Him the brutes
Enter the pure Euclidean kingdom of number,
Free of their bulging and blood-swollen lives
They come to us holy, in cellophane
Transparencies, in the mystical body,

That we may look unflinchingly on death
As the greatest good, like a philosopher should.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

apparently it's a vegetarian manifesto, but I love it anyway.
You are inspiring me to read more poetry, which I love, so thank you.

[Kate P]

"Fairing the tin ellipsoid of a ham"--what a interesting perspective. I can respect it as a "vegetarian manifesto," to use Elizabeth's phrase. Even as remember fondly the Italian hoagie I had for lunch. :)

(P.S. that stupid safecount survey thing that pops up is annoying the heck out of me. Is that a BlogHer thing?)

[Carolyn]

Love it! This really hits home for me, as I just moved to Taiwan and am struggling to reconcile the bloody, recognizable animal pieces with the end food products that I know and love.

I've only been here three weeks, which as it turns out is not quite enough time to brave the 'wet market' for cooking materials.