to have the incorrigible spiritual essence of a filthy hog

to have the incorrigible spiritual essence of a filthy hog

sleeping, always sleeping

or in daytime perchance to wallow or make glutting

widely engorged, but always a bite lacking off the wider world

and fancy swimming through the mud aquatic-like

"and come my days with wings I shall soar"

daydreaming a thousand or millions of undreamt of animal or nature's shapes

eagerly becoming but at noon out growled

the swine's stomach drum

famed ancestors with fangs, boars

dying in winter, helms of bearskin-wearers

pilgrims of strange and deep things, feast, alcohol and women

gluttony for the graves too

but in awakening, finding oneself

as always a pig within a dunny pen

it has slept, it has dreamt, transfigured into the mundane

though the wishes for happier and moister things be not the less

time and fantasy alone are depleted, its time above the ground the less

come certain butchery of destiny, or in waiting and dreaming still

the earthly rut suddenly opens its mouth, and the tomb swallows

small beastlike joy of ego-incineration

thus ended the eternal totem, strongest of all

hog, swine, boar, human

its final empathic moan

birds, milking animals, fishes, hounds

hearts can take any shape, and t'is easy to change

but could aught ward off the growl within

and at the end, the realization that all is a dream

the metamorphosis called waking

of the mud-burdened animal in a pen?

has it ever changed, and has it ever not?

the eternal totem called man?