John Peale Bishop

I SAW a hunchback climb over a hill,

Carrying slops for the pigs to swill.

The snow was hard, the air was frore,

And he cast a bluish shadow before.

Over the frozen hill he came,

Like one who is neither strong nor lame;

And I saw his face as he passed me by,

And the hateful look of his dead-fish eye:

His face, like the face of a wrinkled child

Who has never laughed or played or smiled.

I watched him till his work was done;

And suddenly God went out of the sun,

Went out of the sun without a sound

But the great pigs trampling the frozen ground.

The hunchback turned and retracked the snows;

But where God’s gone, there’s no man knows.