Artificial Selection

“Say there be;

Yet Nature is made better by no mean

But Nature makes that mean; so over that art

Which you say adds to Nature, is an art

That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend Nature, change it rather; but

The art itself is Nature.”

“Ferae familiaris;” warm thanks

and a round of applause

to the Idaho kid for providing the housepets

“Reek of beast” in religion of animals

soaked into the otherwise clean carpets

on a boat each of their kind preserved

a pair to bear the fruits to the future

pink passive of the flowering faiths

but the religion of animals had

lost it all its initial innocence:

exit, chased by a bear,

passed on from Urochs and dire Wolves

and monstrous Boars unto

cave paintings giving sign of good breeding:

ever so many cows and dogs and pigs were born,

and raptors muted into chickens;

bestiary and aviary, aquatic taxonomy

thus the simplicity of artificial selection,

its simplicity and its utter familiarity,

the simplest of farmers has

used the process to his profit

darwinism running naturally by your

that is why you should understand

the transmutation

survival of the cutest and of the tastiest

it should be nothing unfamiliar to you

if he explains it step by step in the manual.

Easy.

Cesar one of in triumphs paraded celebration

employed the bestiary for the public joy

for FAMILIAR FERALS,

in domestically feral furrows:

In Egypt the divine cat pronounced

Alexandrins

Let us drink then so let us feast full

in solemn rite of warm thanksgiving with

family animal housepets doubling us.

Also, a warm hearty thanks to america land

for squash and potatoes, tobacco given

many earth-apples, thanks, animation of

harmonious domestication, holiday,

cornucopious.

in twists of the cozy pumpkin patch.

Black cat as night’s heart maybe

my mystical familiar, perhaps

evolving parallel to our uses with

monolith of man thru proto, lithic,

and now neolithically need for the

sacredly tasty and the mythically cute

no flinty praises from the canopy

revered soon in the first civilizations.

Finally heatfelt gratitude be to meng-zi

for thinking ahead if you planted

mulberry trees every so many markers

and if you allowed dogs and pigs

to mate in due season of mating,

and to wean in due season of weaning,

then our reverend old folk would have

their silk and their meat aplenty:

marked for machines we should listen

root of humanity springing aflame

for whom the bell knolls thou ox

companions and charnel fodder

we treat them sweetly as ourselves.