The Charnel Wheelbarrow

He guided it down the stone-paved streets each day, roll over bump,
in the blind Michoacán noon.
The cart was filled with slaughtered animals: pigs, wild geese; once, a goat
with beautiful blue eyes.
The man never spoke, although now and again he would cry out
a shard of some native hymn---to the sun, the basilica saints;
to no one at all.
After a few years, the curiosity died.
I no longer asked myself where he was ferrying
those small beasts, or to what totemic rite he was bound.
We all grow into our own carcass runs,
some less public than others.