Sonnet #45

Because poets never sing of butchering I don't
Know the way to carve a deer safely,
Pull out its guts and organs, break the joints
I don't know how to collect the blood humanely
When the pig is slaughtered, poets don't sing
Of stuffing geese with grain and a funnel
Until the moment the liver is about to cringe
We learn of the garden in poems, of heaven and hell
The only slaughtering in Odysseus was sacrifice
How to feed blood to ghosts. The rest was war
And kingdom management, and curses and vice:
There was an orchard, though, how to plant one, for
a river runs through it, there are little hills for trees
A gentle slope, runnels for dunging and flowers for bees