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When January is Cold
In this ice-aged hour, this January of hog-killings,
I see the whipped creak of trace-chains
slipping under wrinkled snouts, pigs' lashes
like drawn shade-tassels hanging from closed lids,
know the running blood, the trembling jar
of heads and ears on sleds mule-drawn to the barrel
sliced in two bubbling with scalding water
triple rainbows in the sun—
I turn from the morning, and I believe:
In the first dying made in pleasure or pain and I feel the goneness,
the sacrifices piling up in the fire
growing around the lightwood knots under the vat
and in the ice melting in dribs down hanging trees
and I long for whole days of understanding
the going-out lights, the washed-in-and-out of things
in a January coming onto an old gallows tree
when hogs are shot, cleaned and carved
and salted in a box or hung up to the ceilings
in smokehouses on nails and wires to cure,
tongues dripping a language, I hear.
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