DISCOVER IRELAND
For Philip Coleman
And sometimes the line is moving so fast
the head-of-line guy with the electric stunner
doesn’t have time
to stun the cow properly.
The cow shunts on down the line dazed but alive
to the second man, an Estonian, aged 54,
(sending money home
to see after the grandchild).
His task – to slit the cow’s throat
as soon as the cow’s been stunned
unconscious by the first man
(from just outside Tirana) –
but an unstunned cow
will throw a bovine tantrum
for its life against the second man,
kicking and bucking and butting
against the eighteen-inch blade,
even as the blood is being drawn.
Sometimes the struggle is so rough
and prolonged that the middle-aged man from Estonia
is forced to withdraw the blade
in order to steady or defend himself
and once or twice the bloody blade
falls and slops into the blood-and-offal
river on the factory floor,
where the man, like all the men,
must seep the leather of his boots all day.
Despite the beast strength
and mindless courage of the cow
the second man, this precarious man
with precarious offspring,
always manages, eventually,
and even without halting the line
– which would lead to penalties for everyone –
to open the throat from ear to ear.
Out floods the thick red life of a cow.
Always, the new dead cow is advanced
to the third man, 21, from northern Brazil.
At the end of each weekday the second man
is covered, head to toe, in hoof-shaped bruises.
Black-and-blue patches,
reminiscent of cowhide.