THE TENDER SPOT

On your pink back you lay,
Winded, your trotters to the heaven’s four winds,
One, one might say, to each one.
I tickled you and found
Your tender spot.
Struck by lightning, struck by lightning!
Hobbitquoting Sim,
Panbashed and panicked,
Was shown the cave door.
I wished him high jinks, the tall telamons
Watched him limp stylewards without waving.
He turned painfully,
Pig! he shouted.
Pet I said
And pet I meant!
I said.
Returning, I caressed your tender spot.

SIM

It was all for a piece of you
(One has to make allowances I guess
For saints who spend a lifetime up the pole)
That poor old Sim, no words now only teeth
And flashing limbs and eyes and slabbering lips,
Chivyed you round our cave.
How you could run! You really whipped along.
Your pretty trotters swift as swallows’ wings.
You streaked more pink than sunset on the Nile.
Seeing the horror in his naked legs
And his intention in the kitchen knife.
Run Piggles run, I cried. You heard. You did!
I felt your bounced and wobbled anguish.
What saved you? Mayhap my big shiny frying-pan
With which I struck out at his matted hair
Lap after lap, and raised the yellow dust.


Months later, with that self-same kitchen knife
Raised by this arm, if only there had been
Some saint to thwack my dread locks with the pan,
But you are dead and eaten,
Most of you.

VISIT

Simeon, my pal, a saint, bless him!,
Pillar of society, a stylite,
Down for a few days,
Dropped in to see me with eyes only for you,
And could not wrest them from your plumping cheeks,
Salivating, feeling sorry for himself,
Off the style and on the agony,
His words came swimming
Along the grand canal of his oesophagous,
Skating across his tongue,
Leaping over his teeth.
I had to duck to dodge them:
It’s tough, friend, at the top,
High-life, low self-esteem.
Not much that one can say for Dair Sem’an:
Although perhaps a tad more fun than Slough
Or Merseyside.
These days my basket comes up empty as
A kosher pork-butcher’s on Saturdays,
And if not empty comes up locusts,
One kind or the hopping other.
For twenty years no crumpet and no crackling,
And not so much as smell a bacon-rind
Or dock-pudding.
And babbling thus, enough to try a saint,
He bores right through me till the third day dawned
When guests like fish, they say, begin to stink,
And I hand him a broom to sweep the cave,
A kitchen knife to peel his breakfast carob.
Christ Jesus, Tony! surely there must be
Some small advantages to being Christian
And I spy one starts with the letter π
π for pigling?, brother Simeon, π for pet?
π for pork, brother Antony, π for pork,
And, teeth flashing as the deft words skipped over,
But brother, why not pork for pie?

TELAMONES (2)

The best thing since sliced bacon,
You, I thought, and not one to compete
With saint or poet, not one to object
To fags or alcohol.
I took you down with me to Ali’s bar
To meet the Desert Fathers, all saints, bless them!
(O Ali, take away these yellow beers.
They’re much too yellow, Have you nothing browner?)
Yes, pigs can not be saints
Or poets. That would be,
Oxymoronic, an absurdity,
Like jolly Yorkshiremen or telamons,
Or telamones, playing Rugby League,
Though if they could
They’d have the best front row for miles around.
(A bacon-sandwich would be just the thing
And, Ali, dont forget the HP sauce.)
At least you won’t be writing any poems
About my telamons or anything.
That’s just as well.
I thought.
One poet in a household is enough.

TELAMONES (1)

Telamones
Or telamons,
A saint is free to choose.
Telamons to rhyme with bronze,
Or telamones to rhyme with ponies,
Not that rhyme’s the thing these days.
Your curly tail was an unspoken question
Asking perhaps
What kind of Funk and Wagnall word is that?
You were a pink enigma when I poked you
And when, shaded by flat-headed telamones,
I depoked you,
When I debagged you, Piggles
Here at The Hermitage,
You were still the enigmatic pink pigling that no-one loved.

You with your pink
Eyes, pink nose, pink ev’rything
Quivering, blancmange-like, in the desert breeze
How pink you were for a
Nubian,
How nesh you are, my pet. I spoke aloud.
The telamones listened and agreed.
I saw you view with maidenly alarm
Those granite hunks with eggs like ostriches’
And when I asked if you could you telamon
When you saw one, I fancied you loved puns,
Bad puns, as much as I once did, before glum death,
That editor who cuts puns from the page,
Gave the quietus by which you were cured,
and I was cured of puns,
Well , almost!

THE BIRTHDAY LITTER

Where was it? In the soukh? The loud bazaar
Where Lawrence Durrel pulled the string
Quartet from out his old Paterian hat?....
No, not the zooman,Piggles. I see you twitch
Your pink prick
Ears. That one was Gerald or was it Gerard?
It hardly matters now those ears are deaf and gone
And you are pork and bacon
And some no doubt will find it just a little odd
A saint should still be chatting to his pig who is so
Dead and mostly eaten.
It was indeed the soukh in Alexandria.
There now it's said straight out.
We might have saved ourselves a lot of time
But straight out isn't poetry I guess.
I saw you and the other pretty piglings.
Pink and a girl you were, which rather spoils my joke
About the pink prick
Of your deaf dead ears,
-not deaf in life of course, but in death deaf,-
But though the litter must have had its share
of boys and girls, odd words I know to use
Speaking of squeaking
Piglings,
Piglings and piglettes would have been more fun
But I'm not for neology or larks
At least not when I'm writing lines for you
Who are so
Dead.
Your gender, as they like to say these days,
I did not see and not from modesty
But, like some spoiltforchoice bi-sexual
I fancied one and was not too concerned
Which kind first came to hand
And only later when we were alone
Did I discover what you dared to be.

Sell me a suckling! The best of all your litter.
It is my birthday so let's make it cheap.
We haggled and we soon agreed a price.
I popped you in my poke the way one does.