The brown enormous odor he lived by <br />was too close, with its breathing and thick hair, <br />for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty <br />was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung. <br />Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts, <br />the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare-- <br />even to the sow that always ate her young-- <br />till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head. <br />But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts <br />(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours), <br />the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red <br />the burning puddles seemed to reassure. <br />And then he thought he almost might endure <br />his exile yet another year or more. <br /> <br />But evenings the first star came to warn. <br />The farmer whom he worked for came at dark <br />to shut the cows and horses in the barn <br />beneath their overhanging clouds of hay, <br />with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light, <br />safe and companionable as in the Ark. <br />The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored. <br />The lantern--like the sun, going away-- <br />laid on the mud a pacing aureole. <br />Carrying a bucket along a slimy board, <br />he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight, <br />his shuddering insights, beyond his control, <br />touching him. But it took him a long time <br />finally to make up his mind to go home.<br /><br />Elizabeth Bishop<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-prodigal/
