Rhyll McMaster: Arrogant Animals

The sheep is an arrogant animal.
Like us it is sure of its place
in a myopic world.
It sees what it sees
grass leaf wire
knows that it knows
it's the top twig
of life's arborescence.

It has a name 
for what it feels – BAA and BAA.
That's why it's certain.
That's why its eyes
are a blatant challenging yellow
why it stamps its foot
ushers its lamb away
from human contamination.

When a sheep dies
racist star-gazing
it totters aside
across an unbridgeable creek
trailing wisps of dignity.
It will die adamant.
It will think react
be contained in the superior
essence of sheep.

A sheep's skull is a sculpted housing
fine and hard for a sheep's brain
built to retain
its idea of itself.


From Late Night Shopping (2012). A thoroughly pessimistic poem that is obviously (as the title tells us) about more than just sheep – although Rhyll McMaster was once a sheep farmer, so knows the animal not just from close observation but from close experience. She seems sardonically resigned to an extreme view of animals, including humans, as no more than mechanical, if "trailing wisps of dignity."