The Mad Cow in Love - Jo Shapcott
I want to be an angel and really think
I’m getting there with this mind of mine,
shrinking every day toward the cleanness,
the size of a baby animal’s brain.
Trouble is, I want you to be an angel too
─ and want that more if anything. It’s one
of those demands I can’t raise just like that,
evenings, when we’re reading our different newspapers
you scanning your pages and me mine for an item
to start speech, make mouths smile, knees touch─something
in all that murder and mayhem to launch love.
You tell me you’re looking for news of the self.
Do you want to be an angel? I know
the answer already and it’s rough medicine.
But hink of all the kinds there are, as many
as the different degrees of reaching
for the good. You might get away without
searching for the soul at all those places,
today at least, you’d rather not get to know.
And angels do a variety of jobs:
the post of perpetual adoration might suit,
or divine messenger but I fancy for you
the government of the stars and all the elements.
I know you well enough to choose, after all this time
as foreign correspondent on the track of who you are,
looking for leads: your last screw, the food
you threw away, your strategic approaches
for living through the next hour. I don’t mean it,
though, any of it. I want you earthly,
including all the global terrors and harms
which might come when we fall backwards
into the world of horn and hoof.
I’m getting there with this mind of mine,
shrinking every day toward the cleanness,
the size of a baby animal’s brain.
Trouble is, I want you to be an angel too
─ and want that more if anything. It’s one
of those demands I can’t raise just like that,
evenings, when we’re reading our different newspapers
you scanning your pages and me mine for an item
to start speech, make mouths smile, knees touch─something
in all that murder and mayhem to launch love.
You tell me you’re looking for news of the self.
Do you want to be an angel? I know
the answer already and it’s rough medicine.
But hink of all the kinds there are, as many
as the different degrees of reaching
for the good. You might get away without
searching for the soul at all those places,
today at least, you’d rather not get to know.
And angels do a variety of jobs:
the post of perpetual adoration might suit,
or divine messenger but I fancy for you
the government of the stars and all the elements.
I know you well enough to choose, after all this time
as foreign correspondent on the track of who you are,
looking for leads: your last screw, the food
you threw away, your strategic approaches
for living through the next hour. I don’t mean it,
though, any of it. I want you earthly,
including all the global terrors and harms
which might come when we fall backwards
into the world of horn and hoof.