I'm going insane. I loved this the first time I read it and I'm mortified to insult the poet by not remembering who wrote it.
It's "earthed"--well and truly and it has poignancy and courage. A beautiful sonnet. I'll have to like another one an awful lot if this is not to remain my favourite.
Janet
BUTCHERING
My mother's mother, toughened by the farm,
hardened by infants' burials, used a knife
and swung an axe as if her woman's arm
wielded a man's hard will. Inured to life
and death alike, "What ails you now?" she'd say
ungently to the sick. She fed them too,
roughly but well, and took the blood away--
and washed the dead, if there was that to do.
She told us children how the cows could sense
when their own calves were marked for butchering,
and how they lowed, their wordless eloquence
impossible to still with anything--
sweet clover, or her unremitting care.
She told it simply, but she faltered there.
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