For Nimrod and Ramses

The theory was they’d eat the blackberry patch
          That clogged a third of my two acres
                    With impenetrable archways. Oh, all goats
Love those leaves, people said. They'd strip the vines
          Better than machines. I bought two knee-high weanlings,
                    A Swiss patched black and white with pricked ears
And the look of a child just this moment invited
          To be the big surprise at a party
                    And a buff Nubian with drooping ears
And a permanent half-smile. Their house
          Was a chicken coop inherited as is
                    From the previous lord of my land
With the upper crust of fossilized chicken dropping
          Still intact. They took one tour
                    And then slept under it. They nibbled
A few of the youngest and most tender
          Blackberry leaves, blinking, staring at nothing,
                    Rotating their underjaws and salivating
Like connoisseurs, and then went back
          To pellets. What they wanted
                    Was to skip, jump, clamber, and climb
On anything that was taller than they were,
          The pinnacle of delight being my car
                    Where they would sharpen their hoofs
And then stand braced foursquare
          For the unfolding events on the highway.
                    But most of all they wanted to be near me,
To plant two cloven feet, even
          Three or four in my lap whenever I had one,
                    And then with their victim’s eyes,
Through horizontal pupils designed to scan
          The whole horizon for predators
(Whose slitted upright pupils fed
          A narrower purpose), they would gaze
                    Through my ambiguously circular holes
In search of some lost paradise. One time,
          Before I gave them shamefaced to a farmer,
                    They ran with me through the kneehigh grass
(My pipes of Pan two bottles of cold beer),
          And together we stomped down a playing field
                    The size of a picnic table, doing stiff-legged
Swivels, pogosticking, and when I flopped,
          Exhausted, they leaned over my face and stared
                    Sincerely deep through my eyes
At the landscape floating in the back of my mind
          And bleated softly, calling for the others,
                    For the good goats no longer grazing there.