And came forth like Venus from an ocean of
 heat waves, morning in his pockets and the buckets in his hands
 he emerged from the grey shed, tobacco and wind
 pursed together in song from his tight lips he gathered the day
 and went out to cast wheat before swine.  And in
 his mind he sang songs and thought thoughts, images of day
 and heat, wind and sweat, dreams of silver and
 visions of green earth twisting the cups of his mind
 he crossed his fence of wire, the south Utah steppes
 bending the air into corners of the sky he entered
 the yard to feed his swine.  And his pigs, they come.

Sashidhar Dandamudi’s comments on the Tony Hoagland poem (Poem #1236, ‘Self-Improvement’) made me think of David Lee. It was when I first read Lee’s collection, ‘Porcine Canticles’, that I realized there is no subject that poetry can’t treat with beauty and dignity (and hilarity). I hadn’t thought about ‘Behold’ in a long time, but I enjoyed being reminded and thumbing through Lee’s collection again.

— David

Martin adds

There is something about this poem - images like “morning in his pockets”, lines like “And his pigs, they come” - that I can only describe as magnificent. The seamless superposition and blending of the real and the imagined evokes images worthy of some of the better fantasy novels. The cadence of the words, too, is nigh flawless; I was reminded in places of Patricia McKillip, which (for those of you unfamiliar with her work) is high praise indeed.

Links

There’s a biography here:

http://www.unomaha.edu/~wla/DavidLee.html