The Boar

Ceridwin's sacred beast, bricked into his brute quarters, Pound for pound today is a saleable commodity. This mediaeval master of the hunt, This short-arsed Celtic warrior Shrieking like a carnyx, pads across the straw On tiptoe cloven trotters, pauses, roots and grubs. Criss-crossing his twilight pen, He tries again and again to gore the worm-holed rafters, Holding up the tin roof of his den, Woven with spiders' pentagons and squares. Ringed with cerulean blue, His eyes are two round circles filled with night, Queerly, they peer from the sides of the reedy face Like clouds concealing fickle, thundery weather His ancestor, when cornered in the hunt, Could rip a huntsman's belly with one tusk. He challenges and snorts, this war-pig Spears of bristles rising on his back. A nimble tank on trotters, Hot's a hairy tub of red Satanic cinders. His sudden anger is a falling star. I am weighed in the scales of battle and found wanting. Turning his screwed-up tail towards my face He flaunts his dribbling bottom, pursed like a sour crone's mouth. Jiggling between two hams, his balls are breakfast rolls. For a time he settles, slumped in a corner, mouthing creamy spittle. His blue-veined ears, as white as mouldy cheese, Twitch on the heavy lard-tub of his head. His water-trough is ringed by trampled straw Gold as a fallen torc, facing a pool of pee Eye-wateringly strong, that scours the nose. Smells breach the twitching funnels of his snout Mobile and moist his urgent nostrils clench, unclench, Suck in the dim pen's stench of straw, dust, dung, The rosebuds of his world.