Pastoral wetnurse shaking the dented bottles to mix
cocktails of boiled water & colostrum dust
for the orphaned lambs that skip to her & latch
on any crease in her jeans leaving patches of warm
wetness at her knees until she probes rubber teats
to toothless mouths & wells up with their total simple trust.
The older lamb, cloaked in the skin of a stillborn cousin,
struts under a stiff slink of yellowing curls – yet is still spurned
for his wrong scent by the surrogate ewe in her grief
& the younger one hops happily despite her mangled eye
pecked out by inland gulls that nest in river braids & alight
on ewes’ broad backs to eat their newborns soft parts first.
One big black-backed villain has since been shot
& strung on the fence in wired crucifixion, a vengeance & warning
to the karoro still circling above like a terror of angels,
a cacophony of shadows on the paddock. The lamb will not live.
The girl can smell it through the antiseptic
in the crusted socket which is not quite empty, iodine stained
& pulpy, like a knot in a school desk stuffed with chewed gum.
O mutilée still lovely, bleating, batting pale eyelashes
& those foppish lacy wrinkles at her throat –
this being the power of lambs, their softness
turning everything marshmallow darling
& so our girl is bound to serve their naïve greed
with a bottle in each fist. She has to lean back
from the lambs’ alarming strength. They brace their whole bodies
against the force of their own suckling – wagging useless tails.
They tug as though to rip out synthetic nipples
with their upturned mouths & then drink up the world, chugging
hazy daylight from the atmosphere, churned sunshine
lofty as cream on this day in Aries, the tender betrayal
of the ruminants: she will keep them warm & fed,
then they will warm & one day feed her.
But for now it is as if the girl has neither
an imminent threat of breasts nor canine teeth.
It is just her & the lambs
while all things birth & butchery happen somewhere else,
because until the bottles run dry she has no hunger
& hot milk flows from the palms of her hands.