Cows Poem by Simon Gwynn

Cows,
your eyes voluptuous,
the sweetness of your mouths,
of your grass-lined stomachs,
of your milk
to give
mens' children
meekly at the sun's rise.

Yet for all this
a cow suggests
deliberate ungraciousness:
the lower pectoral girdle is grotesque,
her ruminating stomachs
subscribe to lives
of metabolic disarray,
the churning walk ungainly, negligently lame.

At sunrise meek the eyes
that softly turned beside the road
as you went to yield
your moon-paled milk white unawares,
improperly induced
by men, by electric sucklings
perpetually surprised,
finds you domesticated,
used, deceitfully despised.

And when your vigour's been
extracted to the point
of unfavourable yield,
and you've run down slow, serene,
like an abandoned battery in some redundant field.
And when your cells are dry
and you've exhausted your ration of land,
casually the farmer takes
the stun gun in his hand.