Истории, рассказанные в стихах и песнях
C. K. WILLIAMS
Hog
In a certain town in New Jersey where now will be found malls car dealerships drive-throughs
highways with synchronized lights a motor-vehicle office a store selling discount something or other
I can’t remember what else but haven’t we all experienced such post-agrarian transmogrifications
In a certain town in New Jersey once was a farm farmed by a Jewish farmer a Jewish farmer
my goodness a notion I’d never entertained Jews were lawyers accountants doctors maybe salesmen
until a friend took me to meet one his uncle his mother’s brother who lived somewhere I’d never heard of
In a certain town in New Jersey not far from where I am now existed a farmer who was also a Jew
who’d eluded the second war murders by leaving for the States with nothing in his wallet or satchel
but a hammer and saw and a handful of nails and worked his way through the shit-pit of Europe to here
where he went back with somebody else’s money some earlier escapee-arrival’s maybe his sister’s
to farming which had been his family’s trade for many generations in the old country he boasted
and there he was on his farm now with his chickens and corn and I saw three or four cows and some pigs
and on this day a dead hog that is to say a hog he’d only just slaughtered that hung upside down
from a hook in a rafter and a stout iron chain and which the farmer the Jewish farmer was flinging
boiling water against flinging and flinging so its bristles would soften which I could see they had
for then he was scraping the hog with a crescent-shaped length of steel and the bristles were loosening
and I gathered that when they were gone he’d be (how had the word ever found me) gutting the hog
there was a gleaming well-honed knife at the ready whose task I could tell was slicing you open
as you horribly swung there colorless gunk spooling out of your snout while the booted farmer
methodically effected the everlasting labor of farmers Jewish or not pulling you with his knotty arms
and leather gloves towards him to cut you apart and sell you I supposed is what would come next
In a certain town in New Jersey might anyone remain to ask forgiveness for the concrete and asphalt
the forests felled for McMansions the eternally lost corn and wheat fields and vanished orchards
might anyone recall the sweet stink of manure of tilled earth the odor even of fresh blood on a floor
and who besides me will remember the farmer so imposing in the masterful exercise of his calling
who with a snort and a clap on the back forgave me the gawk of my adolescence as imagining
the rest of what life would be bringing I knelt by a rusting soon to be scrapped hay rake and threw up
Hog
In a certain town in New Jersey where now will be found malls car dealerships drive-throughs
highways with synchronized lights a motor-vehicle office a store selling discount something or other
I can’t remember what else but haven’t we all experienced such post-agrarian transmogrifications
In a certain town in New Jersey once was a farm farmed by a Jewish farmer a Jewish farmer
my goodness a notion I’d never entertained Jews were lawyers accountants doctors maybe salesmen
until a friend took me to meet one his uncle his mother’s brother who lived somewhere I’d never heard of
In a certain town in New Jersey not far from where I am now existed a farmer who was also a Jew
who’d eluded the second war murders by leaving for the States with nothing in his wallet or satchel
but a hammer and saw and a handful of nails and worked his way through the shit-pit of Europe to here
where he went back with somebody else’s money some earlier escapee-arrival’s maybe his sister’s
to farming which had been his family’s trade for many generations in the old country he boasted
and there he was on his farm now with his chickens and corn and I saw three or four cows and some pigs
and on this day a dead hog that is to say a hog he’d only just slaughtered that hung upside down
from a hook in a rafter and a stout iron chain and which the farmer the Jewish farmer was flinging
boiling water against flinging and flinging so its bristles would soften which I could see they had
for then he was scraping the hog with a crescent-shaped length of steel and the bristles were loosening
and I gathered that when they were gone he’d be (how had the word ever found me) gutting the hog
there was a gleaming well-honed knife at the ready whose task I could tell was slicing you open
as you horribly swung there colorless gunk spooling out of your snout while the booted farmer
methodically effected the everlasting labor of farmers Jewish or not pulling you with his knotty arms
and leather gloves towards him to cut you apart and sell you I supposed is what would come next
In a certain town in New Jersey might anyone remain to ask forgiveness for the concrete and asphalt
the forests felled for McMansions the eternally lost corn and wheat fields and vanished orchards
might anyone recall the sweet stink of manure of tilled earth the odor even of fresh blood on a floor
and who besides me will remember the farmer so imposing in the masterful exercise of his calling
who with a snort and a clap on the back forgave me the gawk of my adolescence as imagining
the rest of what life would be bringing I knelt by a rusting soon to be scrapped hay rake and threw up