GOATS go past the back of the house
like dry leaves in the
dawn,
And up the
hill like a river, if you watch.
At dusk they patter back like a
bough being dragged on the
ground,
Raising dusk
and acridity of goats, and bleating.
Our old goat we tie up at night in
the shed at the back of
the broken Greek
tomb in the garden,
And when the herd goes by at dawn she begins to bleat
for
me to come down and untie
her.
Merr — err — err! Merr — er —
errr! Mer!
Mé!
Wait, wait a bit, I’ll come
when I’ve lit the fire.
Merrr!
Exactly.
Mé! Mer!
Merrrrrrr!!!
Tace, tu, crapa, bestia!
Merr — ererrr — ererrrr!
Merrrr!
She is such an alert listener, with
her ears wide, to know
am I
coming!
Such a canny
listener, from a distance, looking upwards,
lending first one ear, then another.
There she is, perched on her manger,
looking over the
boards into the day
Like a belle at her
window.
And immediately she sees me she
blinks, stares, doesn’t
know me, turns
her head and ignores me vulgarly with
a wooden blank
on her face.
What do I care for her, the ugly
female, standing up there
with her long
tangled sides like an old rug thrown
over a
fence.
But she puts
her nose down shrewdly enough when the knot
is untied,
And jumps
staccato to earth, a sharp, dry jump, still ignor —
ing me,
Pretending to look round the
stall.
Come on, you, crapa! I’m not your servant!
She turns her head away with an
obtuse, female sort of
deafness,
bête.
And then
invariably she crouches her rear and makes
water.
That being
her way of answer, if I speak to her. — Self —
conscious!
Le bestie non parlano,
poverine!
She was bought at Giardini fair, on
the sands, for six
hundred
lire.
An obstinate old witch, almost
jerking the rope from my
hands to eat the
acanthus, or bite at the almond buds,
and make me
wait.
Yet the moment
I hate her she trips mild and smug like a
woman going to mass.
The moment I really detest her.
Queer it is, suddenly, in the
garden
To catch
sight of her standing like some huge, ghoulish
grey bird in the air, on the bough of the leaning
almond-tree,
Straight as a board on the bough, looking down like
some hairy horrid God the Father in a William Blake
imagination.
Come
down, crapa, out of that almond tree!
Instead of which she strangely rears
on her perch in the
air, vast beast.
And strangely paws the air,
delicate,
And
reaches her black-striped face up like a snake, far up,
Subtly, to the twigs overhead,
far up, vast beast,
And snaps them sharp, with a little twist of her
anaconda
head;
All her great hairy-shaggy belly open against
the morning.
At seasons she curls back her tail
like a green leaf in the fire,
Or like a lifted hand, hailing at her wrong
end.
And having
exposed the pink place of her nakedness, fixedly,
She trots on blithe
toes,
And if you
look at her, she looks back with a cold, sardonic
stare.
Sardonic,
sardonyx, rock of cold fire.
See me? She says, That’s
me!
That’s her.
Then she leaps the rocks like a
quick rock.
Her
back-bone sharp as a rock,
Sheer will.
Along which ridge of libidinous
magnetism
Defiant,
curling the leaf of her tail as if she were curling
her lip behind her at all life.
Libidinous desire runs back and forth, asserting
itself in that
little lifted bare
hand.
Yet she has such adorable spurty
kids, like spurts of black
ink.
And in a month again is as if
she had never had them.
And when the billy goat mounts
her
She is brittle
as brimstone.
While
his slitted eyes squint back to the roots of his
ears.
Taormina.