Pig Song
Pig Song - meaning Summary
Reclaiming an Earthy Self
The speaker rebukes an other who has reduced them to a degraded, animalized body — a "greypink vegetable" destined to be fed and consumed. They reclaim dignity by embracing their earthy, noisy identity: the sky, weeds, roots, dung and song become a deliberate, defiant selfhood. The poem argues that when you shape someone by what you give them, their responses reflect that shaping; the speaker accepts and transforms that reality into a hymn.
Read Complete AnalysesThis is what you changed me to: a greypink vegetable with slug eyes, buttock incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip, a skin you stuff so you may feed in your turn, a stinking wart of flesh, a large tuber of blood which munches and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile I have the sky, which is only half caged, I have my weed corners, I keep myself busy, singing my song of roots and noses, my song of dung. Madame, this song offends you, these grunts which you find oppressively sexual, mistaking simple greed for lust. I am yours. If you feed me garbage, I will sing a song of garbage. This is a hymn.
from Selected Poems 1965-1975
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