Pig Song

By Margaret Atwood

This 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.

Copyright Credit: Margaret Atwood, “Pig Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright 1974, 1976 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Poetry (February 1974)