Affect flat as dung, or sludge
that slicks the gradient, the young
that drive an udder, as if a word
for "cow" might make cattle
might make beef and might
make muscles
on seasons of less light -
late sunrise suppressing melatonin,
and that bell, sounding out,
as silver as a twisting acacia leaf
driven by a wild front coming in
to discharge the drought, the wanking machines,
gleam of the tanker
that'll feed the cream separator,
centrifuge making heavy
water.
Dairy farmers are fetishists.
They might arrange for sons
to beat you, or call their lawyers.
Either way, the truth is
they fondle genitalia.
As a best-case scenario
they suffer separation anxiety,
substituting mother's breasts.
Some don't eat them because they're large.
Geneticists will shrink them, even change
the colour of their flesh so they look
like chickens, with the colour and texture
of flesh remaining consistent.
The price will go up.
It will be a gourmet market
for refined sensibilities
and/or palates.
Molly B12 poked her head
through the door of the shack
most mornings. Her calf days
shortening. Some say pity
comes because of the size
of their eyes. Her eyes
were small, and their vocabulary
too immense for translation.
Academics aspire
to cattle baronetcy.
They can control
in a way that they can't control
their students. They can slaughter
in a way that they can't sexually
subdue. There's no getting away
from linking
sex and violence.
The old brown bull
said let's have anothery
down by the scrubbery
I'll supply the rubbery...
The old brown cow
said you can go to buggery
I'm not rootin' no more.
A city kid
in a city primary school
with familial connections
to the country
sang this to me
under the lantana tree.
Having lived on cow farms,
or inside cow farms - surrounded
by fences and cows and the apparently
conflicting sounds of slaughter
and the gum-booted, overalled
young men calling in, or maybe
I should say "opening gates"
given the rush, udders so full
the milking shed is a relief -
for a grand total of eighteen months
or maybe two years, in the south-west
dairy and cattle areas,
I cannot speak cow still,
still, I cannot or never could
speak cow. Most of my time
spent with sheep,
I claim to understand
their words of pain
with some clarity,
whatever the dialect.
That serotonin rush, cow dung now pure
dust in drought, like snuff - the stuff
the oracle likes to inhale
before unsettling statesmen and warriors,
which might be one and the same; this big pastoral,
acrostic battle, imminent georgic
of the broken soil, shattered crust
that tread melaleuca and jam tree flats
and undulations, go down to the dam and creek
and Heidelberg lights
dappled and straited,
low to the horizon
and outbulked by the huge sky
with impressionable clouds
that can't rain, aren't painted in the right way
to let go their liquid as light
strikes sparks to fire the remaining
undergrowth on outcrops where hooves
gain little purchase, this breaking up.
In concordance, the Biblical imprimatur
that seals the valves of every John Deere
or Case or even machine imported from Asia,
assuming it's been blessed
by Australian customs,
that glue that makes sinews
work hand in hand with bone,
while a tallow factory gets started
where they irrigate down south,
is listed from Isaiah, through Job, Leviticus,
Ezekiel and Numbers, or the other way
round for the last two, with another Isaiah
in there, though Ezekiel's "I have given thee
cow's dung for man's ..." rings out
in the coprophilia of industry
and growth, and the fertilizing
of paddocks stripped of all growth
in the opening-up of discourse.
My father was awarded a steer hide - red-brown
as the interior of Australia, quote unquote -
for a decade of service to the mining company.
There's nothing more to this anecdote.
The heat suffering is the suffering
of permanent winter, the sheets
of summer light and evisceration
the saturation of darkness
and veining of hillsides
after a cloudburst. All is darkness.
Light never stimulates the good vibes
of those chemicals that make us feel
all is okay when it isn't. It's the negative
that reverses inside and outside
the darkroom. Jersey cows
are particularly photogenic
and barely wince when the camera
automatically flashes
on a sunstruck summer's day.
Relishing the soft muzzle
and the warm moisture
around the nostrils, the light fur
that makes touch the central sense.
an organ in itself, about the mouth
that sub-electric intimation
that'll become arousal, stimulation
as you look to mate.
She milked the cow
after the earthquake
and surprisingly
it didn't hold back.
Stories of butter
in the bucket
have been the mainstay
of family myth
ever since.
The cow's name
was Princess.
It lived for another
couple of years,
though dried up
long before this.
The bull ring through his nipple
really was a bull ring,
and he demanded his girlfriends
use their panties
as a cape and spear him
with painted nails
as he rushed them.
He'd always admired
the get-up and pluck of matadors -
well-dressed and brutal,
with the backing of whole cities,
even countries.
City kid: What's a cow, Mum?
Mum: A large animal that lives in a field
and tastes a bit like McDonalds'...
The stomach plug, flagrant to open
and check-up, ant colony the chamber,
the enzymal action, belly business,
fragrant, busy, the reaching in
and pulling out the mush, like the bin-composter
that turns around on its metal frame,
the sort that local industry can build and market,
you just throw in your grass clippings and the like,
make of it that extra stomach.
