Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs

Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs,
Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs


It is true that the rivers
went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks,
until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds
in somnolent troughs,

That the air was heavy
with the breath of these swine,
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder's rattapallax,

That the man who erected this cabin,
planted this field,
and tended it awhile,
Knew not the quirks of imagery,

That the hours of his indolent,
arid days,
grotesque with this nosing in banks,
This somnolence and rattapallax,

Seemed to suckle themselves
on his arid being,
As the swine-like rivers
suckled themselves
While they went seaward
to the sea-mouths.

Wallace Stevens