Cinghiale
by Sam Niven
after Mark Strand
Is it you, standing among the olive trees
beyond the sanded road? You in the moonlight
mangling twigs with one hoof while the others
drill into the damp earth, swallowing all but
your yellowed tusks into the tawny night? Is it you
beneath whom the grey-green grass wrinkles
like plum peel? I watched the hills turn indigo,
the flags awaken into jigsaw streets scented
with fresh oil and sweat and met by the international
anthem of rapid pulses—but did not make it home
before nightfall. You emerge from the grove,
nostrils steaming. I imagine your teeth
at my throat. But that’s you—isn’t it?—
squealing like a rusted hinge and prodding
fallen olives because you too feared the deep
evening, and yet are unprepared for it?
Are you savoring the scent of flesh in the warm
Tuscan air, or is it me you’re afraid of, the tip
of your snout trembling like my hands?
Is it you or the milky, desolate fog that breathes
the command into our bodies: run, run—?
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