Manitoba Pork

Manitoba is replete with multimillion dollar hog barns. Joyce's brother is the owner/operator of one a few miles from here.

One of the benefits to our family is that we always have plenty of pork in the freezer for very little cost. When you have four rapidly growing children to feed, it is nice to have the cheap resource.

As my family was enjoying dinner today,(pork of course) I recalled a poem I studied in university.

Pig Song

Margaret Atwood (1978)


This is what you changed me to:
a graypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile

I have the sky, which is only half

caged, I have my weed corners,
I keep myself busy, singing
my song of roots and noses,

my song of dung. Madame,
this song offends you, these grunts
which you find oppressively sexual,
mistaking simple greed for lust.

I am yours. If you feed me garbage
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.

It's funny what comes to mind when you make the effort to ponder rather than to eat.

Poor pig.

I'm hungry.