[R. S. Gwynn]

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.


Well, I have no major complaints with this one at all. My only quibbles might be with "Inured" and "faltered"--not for any particular reason except that something better might show up eventually. Maybe "blood" could be replaced with "pans" or something a little less specific. Otherwise, it's quite good, and line 8 is one of those masterstrokes of simplicity that works perfectly, especially in the last line of the octave.