amongst ‘livestock’
Nothing is adapted to the fret
of LED and blockwork, snow-drift gusted
Over ice into
the hayricks, scraps
of sackcloth, clagging, bodies scabbed with mud
and bedstraw, blotched eyes
searching: finding
nothing; giving in.
We know their names
from catalogues and songs; but these
are nothing like, just weather of a sort,
discarnate, eyeless, waiting for a sign:
run of matter blackening the floor,
the ache of rennet, hoofprints in the stone.
Copyright Credit: John Burnside, "Amongst Livestock" from The Uncollected Animals: Poems for Our Nonhuman Kin, A Global Anthology. Copyright © 2025 by John Burnside. Reprinted by permission of Turtle Point Press.
Source: The Uncollected Animals: Poems for Our Nonhuman Kin, A Global Anthology. (Turtle Point Press, 2025)