Throwbacks

The lives of sheep are cruelly circumscribed:
Chivied from field to gate,
From gate to field
By whistling shepherds and their grinning dogs;
Annually disinfected
Barbered, castrated
Or made pregnant by the shepherd's calendar:
Finally transported
Packed like Jews
To slaughter places:
First and last
No more than walking meat.

Yet, on occasion
When their eyes
Caught in the shaft of headlights
Shine green as tigers:
Or in winter fields, they pause
From grazing, lifting their gentle faces
As if to catch some vagrant thought:
Or when young lambs
In sudden joy,
Jump, hooves together
From the springy turf,
Perhaps they half recall a world
When all the hills were theirs,
With no constraint
But for the natural boundaries
Of birth and death and mating.