Ballad of Fat Margot

Ballad of Fat MargotAuthor(s): Augustus YoungSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 191-192Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477233 .

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Augustus Young

Two Poems

COW AT CUD AFTER B. BRECHT

Against the byre rail her dewlap strains.

She feeds on bales of hay, but is polite: chews thirty times at least on every bite, extracts each drop from straw that splits its veins.

Her hardened haunch and rheumy eyes are old; so much behind her, nothing to but cud:

the years have cooled the ardour of her blood:

she's not surprised by anything, I'm told.

And while she works her chops somebody draws

with sweaty hands thick flyblown milk from her; it could be clothes-pegs pinching on her udder, she isn't bothered by the farmyard raws.

What's going on is neither here nor there.

So, dropping dung, she takes the evening air.

BALLAD OF FAT MARGOT

If I should treat my lady with aplomb it doesn't mean I am an idiot

for she possesses all a man might

want.

I am her sword and shield and all she's got. When loose males are around I keep a stock

of peppered wine and plenty bread and cheese

to tempt them back with me. I amn't slow

to shower attentions on lone wolves who please to put their money down and take their ease

in the doubtful joint where we've opened shop.

191



IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

Its not all pleasure. Sometimes she goes out

and comes back cowlike from an empty trough with breasts all bowed and spirits sucked quite dry; and that's when sweetness sours and tempers fly. I twang her sagging garters, and let a shout

I'll strip your gauds off, put them in the hock.

The pious piece comes back at me, you'll not

as sure as Christ died screaming. On the hop I nail a notice to her nose and mouth


Exhausted, both, there's nothing to but bed:

she, bloated like a cockroach bred on dung, flatulent with laughter, butts my head, and practised hands will pump my joystick numb.

Then getting sloshed, we drop off like the dead.

Til at cockcrow, I feel a belly flop over my carcass, on a sensitive spot, to mount me like a daffodil: I'm done


The weather's not important:

sun or rain,

I can sit pretty with my wallet fat, the guardian of her duty and domain.

We are well-matched: I'm sewer-rat, she wild-cat.

And in the gutter stakes we will not stop to free the filth that clogs the honest drain


192



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Ballad of Fat Margot