If You Go and Look at a Hen For an Hour or Two, You’ll Find in the End
That the Mystery Has Not Diminished but Rather Increased
Its feet yellow and strong.
Its walking rhythm with that kind of ludicrous efficiency,
halting from time to scrabble in the dirt.
Its compact structure in bright feathers, black,
nearly blue when the sun strikes.
Crowned in red, with its beak
exactly the same yellow as its feet,
eyes quick.
As it moves forward on the ground, it scrapes and pecks,
it lifts its head every so often, moving it a bit:
an inexorable atavism
for spotting potential predators.
And now it stretches, flapping vigorously in place.
To perk up, maybe,
to get its circulation going, or something of the sort.
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by Alejandro Crotto
from Asymptote Journal
Oct. 2017
translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
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