"Vultures" A poem by Margaret Atwood

Vultures

by Margaret Atwood

Hung there in the thermal

whiteout of noon, dark ash

in the chimney’s updraft, turning

slowly like a thumb pressed down

on target; indolent V’s; flies, until they drop.

Then they’re hyenas, raucous

around the kill, flapping their black

umbrellas, the feathered red-eyed widows

whose pot bodies violate mourning,

the snigger at funerals,

the burp at the wake.

They cluster, like beetles

laying their eggs on carrion,

gluttonous for a space, a little

territory of murder: food

and children.

Frowzy old saint, bald-

headed and musty, scrawny-

necked recluse on your pillar

of blazing air which is not

heaven: what do you make

of death, which you do not

cause, which you eat daily?

I make life, which is prayer.

I make clean bones.

I make a gray zinc noise

which to me is a song.

Well, heart, out of all this

carnage, could you do better?