his hell-hunks of rotting flesh
left to slough from his bones
like sacrifices to the god of steel,

one and one and one
he died, she died, they all died,
their stunned unreckoning

rose into stars, numberless as stars.
And the night came
lifting him up with his black rage

and gave him back his magical curving horns,
and lifted his mountainous woolly back-skull
onto the still larger mountains of black woolly shoulders,

and polished his small black eyes
and sharp hooves, his thunderous black bones,
and patched his scraggy, reeking beard.

But by morning the tractors had come
and the grasses vanished, and the dust came,
and that was the end of the first day.