St. Francis and the Sow

The bud

stands for all things,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within of self-blessing;

as St. Francis 

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking

and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

--Galway Kinell

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I never can read this poem without getting all choked up with tears.  Not because it makes me sad, but because it is so beautiful.  It radiates with truth, a truth that is hidden from our ordinary sight, but which is translucent to the inner eye of love.

Kinell must have had that contemplative eye to see so clearly into the "long, perfect loveliness of sow".  In other words, he saw a beast that is often thought of as ugly, or disgusting as God sees it:  perfectly lovely.  Or, as we read in Genesis, "God saw that it was good."  Aren't there parts of ourselves too that long for that touch of St. Francis on our brow?  We too need to remember just how beautiful we are.  Why?  Because God looks on us with Love, and when God looks on anything He confers on it His own beauty and goodness.  All things are like a mirror reflecting His image.  St. John of the Cross prays, "Look upon me O Lord, that having looked at me you may look at me again..."  

We can do for others what Francis did for the sow in this poem;  we can touch them with our love and respect, thus allowing them to see themselves as they really are:  lovely and lovable.

This is a poem that one can meditate on over and over, never exhausting the depth of its meaning.  It is so enduring because it speaks such a great truth.