New Westminster's poet laureate, Alan Hill, has reached out to share some pandemic poetry with Record readers.
Here is No. 45 from his Animal Poems.
The Pangolin
I did not know that you existed. You
discrete anteater creature, with your wintry scales
features of an alien god or failed comedian
with a tongue
that can pass through mountains
has passed across dynasties of Chinese history
slipped under borders, into bodies, through time
whose body is crushed, used to clear the blood
blocked Fallopian tubes, to bring milk.
I do know you now
now I feel you uncurling in my cough
your claws within my hemorrhaging lungs, the
scrabble of you, within the
work-less silence of the world,
in which I am masked, isolated, suspended.
I know your revenge
how you must have it
for how you have been hunted, misrepresented
endangered
a revenge, you will not know that you have taken
or are capable of having wished for
you, for whom, I suspect, simply being, is enough.
- Alan Hill
