ROSE'S FARM

Rockribbed winter sunsets I would stop at Rose's farm,

where the rat-brown hump of the house

looked like a spawning place for felons

and sheep paddled in the black soup-hole

of the barnyard. Rose herself had the face

of a purebred sheep, done up in challis,

and she never smiled. She had been driven from Poland

by some year so big and black that, like an older,

white lace queen, she had not been amused,

then or ever. But she was glad to see me,

she swaddled me in afghans

smelling of all her favorite dogs

and rushed off for bulbous old-country bottles

that were bluish, and gritty, and kicked around,

as though they had known hard trouble and calamity.

This was Polish Bullsblood, a red-black wine

that stuck to my tongue like the blade of a skate.

Rose sucked the busthead brew

calmly and sweetly, "real Galician mother's-milk,"

as she said: and she talked of Roy, her favorite,

the son who'd moved to Chicago

and was a hammer man at the stockyards.

One afternoon he appeared while I was there,

his arms full of fine caramellos, and whoopee cushions,

and records of the Goosetown Polka, and at last

Rose smiled. He asked after her heart,

that old red pumper: she struck her breast

with impatient contempt.

Then she cooked a big fat chicken

coughing with sweet paprika

and her remarks, like little dried black mushrooms,

expanded pungently in the red steam of the kitchen.

She set the platter before Roy

and just then the loose kitchen door flapped open

and a little hog torn by a dog

ran in, its cascading chitlins

dragging on the floor.

Rose trapped him between her knees

and threw him on his side.

Then she stuffed the flowery pink wetness

of the guts back into their hole, looped them neatly,

and sewed up the screaming trotter

with needle and strong twine.

Roy sat with his fork in his hand, horribly green.

Finally he said: "Nature! Christ!"

And then: "Give me the kill floor

anytime."