Capra Aegagrus Hircus

By Terrance Hayes

No one knew the reason the town goat
followed the flower vender around town
until someone found piles of damp petals
along the routes the flower vender took.

All the kinfolk of the goat had long
become food. Their bones & muscles
had been used for tools & weapons.
Mannish water, a popular goat stew, was made from the feet, intestines
& testicles of some goats. Cashmere
came from the undercoat of superfine
fibres on the underbelly of other goats.

Because the goat is one of the oldest
domesticated animals, it was one of the first
to be sacrificed in rituals, cooked in a hole
of fire, thrown off the side of a mountain.

Our goat followed the vender around town
dragging chains anytime there was a death
& dragging bells anytime a child was born.
The goat had no name. Or each of us called it

a different name, but when we draped its horns
in wreathes of fruit and flowers at harvesttime,
we called it Cornucopious the Goat. Dionysus
spent his childhood disguinsed as a goat

under Zeus’ protection, but he went mad
when he was turned back into a human.
Goats have pupils flat as slits in their irises.
A goat is more likely to ram a man

than a ram. Our goat pooped flowers
whether we fed it meat from the table
or the butcher’s block or even if it ate a rodent
at the roadside after scaring the buzzards off.

Buzzards because when you put an ear
to the bird it sounded like bees in a hive.
The average goat is well known
for pinpoint balance in precarious places, for climbing trees with hooves like ballerina
shoes & for escaping escape-proof enclosures.
When grazing undisturbed, goats maintain
social distance, but sheep huddle together.

Goats don’t care for rain, rivers, or seas.
Goats converse with people about as well
as dogs & horses do. When your grandfather’s
grandfather was alive, he used to say,

“I’ll be here to eat the goat that eats the grass
on your grave.” Many years later you were born
stubbornly side-eyeing the doctor at your delivery.
Maybe your mother had been given a magic

goat’s milk by the midwife. I brought flowers
& the bells & babbling of a goat.
You spoke immediately as well as a goat.
I’m sorry I have always listened so poorly.

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