Newspaper left on a train (to a cow)

In Revelation chapter 6 verse 13 we are told that the stars fell from the sky, just as figs are shaken from their tree in a gale. On 15th October 1972 a cow grazing near the town of Trujillo in Venezuela was killed by a meteorite. This poem is addressed to that cow.

I doubt that many cows understand the manner of their death.

You might have heard the sonic boom and then you may,

if you did not die instantly, have been conscious of

your smashed neck and shoulder and actually stared at the boulder

and known it was connected to your closing.

 

Like you, I didn’t know it happened on the fifteenth of October

because in nineteen-seventy-two I was only four years old –

I hadn’t learnt about time and dates. Like you,

I couldn’t pronounce “Trujillo” and “Venezuela” and a sort of farmer

was pulling me by the nose through sums and stories –

my first term at school, my first fences and gates.

Now, I read in a newspaper left on a train that you are distinguished

as being the only sentient life documented

as ever having been killed by a meteorite.

 

And when I lie dying, I should expect to know more than you;

but what ‘s my story; what does it add up to? What will I see?

A farmer come to lead me through an open gate with his hand on my shoulder;

will I grasp some cosmic order, or will I have no idea what’s hit me

 

like a boulder? Will people laugh a bit as they remember me?

This train hurtles fast, through so much scenery.

 

2007.