ST FRANCIS AND THE SOW by Galway Kinnell:

Saint Francis


put his hand on the creased forehead


of the sow, and told her in words and in touch


blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow


began remembering all down her thick length,


from the earthen snout all the way


through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,


from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine


down through the great broken heart


to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering


from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:


the long, perfect loveliness of sow