Say it: his name is foul as this foul ground. The syllable explodes to seal the nose. But look, his ears are delicately pink — see how they tilt to scan us — and his round haunches are pale as buttocks. On tiptoes he dances in the mud, each eye a chink into some dark intelligence, a link troubling the air between us as he goes back to his crib of straw. Once, on a farm I loved until that hour — memory flows blood-red to paint the scene — they bound the Christmas pig, slit lengthwise and still warm, on a long wooden spit: one shrill alarm: I cannot seal myself against that sound.© Rhina P. Espaillat
From Lapsing to Grace (Bennett and Kichel, 1992)