"Annunciations I" by Geoffrey Hill

Annunciations

I

The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned look
From its subsistence in the stiffening-mire.
Cleansing has become killing, the reward
Touchable, overt, clean to the touch.
Now at a distance from the steam of beasts,
The loathly neckings and fat shook spawn
(Each specimen-jar fed with delicate spawn)
The searchers with the curers sit at meat
And are satisfied. Such precious things put down
And the flesh eased through turbulence the soul
Purples itself; each eye squats full and mild
While all who attend to fiddle or to harp
For betterment, flavour their decent mouths
With gobbets of the sweetest sacrifice.

Source of the text - Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 26.

Bourguignomicon: Clot-prophecy. A critique of poetry “clean to the touch,” made in “the stiffening-mire” by careerist posers as if their Word were angelic.