The bud <br />stands for all things, <br />even those things that don't flower, <br />for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; <br />though sometimes it is necessary <br />to reteach a thing its loveliness, <br />to put a hand on its brow <br />of the flower <br />and retell it in words and in touch <br />it is lovely <br />until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; <br />as St. Francis <br />put his hand on the creased forehead <br />of the sow, and told her in words and in touch <br />blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow <br />began remembering all down her thick length, <br />from the earthen snout all the way <br />through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of <br /> the tail, <br />from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine <br />down through the great broken heart <br />to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering <br />from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking <br /> and blowing beneath them: <br />the long, perfect loveliness of sow.<br /><br />Galway Kinnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/st-francis-and-the-sow/
