The Marrow Bones

Chaïm Soutine, Carcass of Beef, ca. 1925. Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

A hound there was that once inhabited my house.

Its doggy smell lurked in the stairwell when I came,

And out back in the woods were massive marrow bones—

Mementos of a steer that gave its mortgaged life.

That great dog’s vanished now; so has its canine reek.

The people who then had it here are all gone, too,

Their ghosts evaporating—unable to remain.

Tossed into a gully, though, the big bones speak.

Of the four fundamental forces physics finds,

Gravity's the weakest. Might weakness win at length?

Perhaps there’s a fifth force, its power weaker yet,

The force of suffering—spelled out by marrow bones,

A force that makes the impertinent stars retreat,

And shelter in remotest heaven from its strength?

Pieter Aertsen, A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms (1551). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC.

Thursday, February 26, 2026