THE COW POEM

All my life it seems there has been a cow
somewhere in the picture. This one, brown,
sitting by a lecture hall, expecting rain.
I didn't notice cows until I was fifteen
and I heard them mooing in the barns
at midnight. Strange for cows to be awake
so late, but they are. A Friesian once 
was sipping milk in the bar and told me
it was human. The only cow that ever spoke
was into politics. Most of them stand dumb,
flicking flies from their arse, their eyes,
the size of wet planets, stare from lashes
long and curled. They do not threaten me,
these loving giants, who turn up at the margin
of my funerals and weddings. They chose me,
so that even now there is one sighing
by the skylight, bedding down. One day,
or so the Friesian told me, a bull will come
at sunset, stand silhouetted at the end
of a long, empty road in Idaho or Istanbul,
a donkey prick hung beneath his belly.
He will scratch a foot, snort, and run
straight through me. That, she said, will be
the sign the cows are done. Tomorrow,
I fly to Delhi, where I hear cows are holy
and roads in the centre are short and crowded.