[APPLAUSE]
Well, then the next one, "The Bride,"
tells about the going to be bred.
And when she came back she's eating such rich swill
she couldn't fit into her little A-frame.
She was a house pig but she had her own little house,
and she was terribly ashamed.
And she sort of encamped outside their window--
the humans' window --for three days, and so she
kind of slimmed down to get back into her house.
And as she said, until I could enter my maiden chamber
once more, but now I carried in me a fruit of my mating.
And the next one, her task is to instruct her piglets.
These shall I house train, I swear it.
They shall dwell like their mother among dexterous humans
to teach them pig wisdom, she says.
And she said, Oh, Isis, bless thy pigs--
piglets.
And then, this one, I think, I'll read to you.
It's called "Her Secret."
In the humans' house fine things abound,
furniture, rugs by the hearth, bowls
and pitchers, freezer and fridge, closets of food,
baskets of apples, the musical saw on which my He-human plays
the songs I dream.
In my neat A-frame they think there is nothing, only
the clean straw of my bed.
But under the floor I gather beautiful tins, nutshells,
ribbons, shining buttons, the thousand baubles a pig desires.
[CHUCKLING]
They are well hidden.
Piglets shall find one day an inheritance
of shapes, textures, mysterious substances--
Rubber!
Velvet!
Aluminum!
Paper!
Yes, I am founding, stick by stick,
wrapper by wrapper, trinkets, toys--
Civilization!
[LAUGHTER]