Re-located

So, she is here still, the she-goat,

with her sagging, suffering belly,

feet spread wide for balance. I think

Picasso, the alert craftsman, saw her

one day in a dry field somewhere

in Spain, and brought her here to enter

her bronze phase, her permanence; her udder

still stiff with impending milk, her bony nose

long as an old Caesar's, though she's so young -

look how her haunches are pushed forward,

how her narrow eyes, that would have been

yellow, show all the remembered heat and

heaviness, the nights of stars, windy mornings,

the shoving and tugging of lust; and the kid -

it still squirms within. I came to new York,

to this garden, to see just this, the horns

jaunty as ever, the same one broken off at

the tip. Because I want her to live for ever.

Lauris Edmond