The Butcher and the Cook

 By M. G. Stephens

1. Joe the Butcher

Joe the Butcher talks about Descartes and

All of the life of the mind when he works

In the slaughterhouses of New Jersey

Or in the rare kitchens of the Palisades,

Severing arteries and boning chickens for

Meals at four-star hotels. Sometimes, when I

See Joe the Butcher, I am reminded

Of Prince Wen Hui's cook who practiced

The Tao of cutting up an ox, not just

By mass but by distinctions, as he said.

Finally, he saw nothing with his eyes.

The cleaver found its own way by instinct,

If not of the steel blade and wood handle,

Then the intuition of the butcher.

2. Prince Wen Hui’s Cook

Other cooks needed a new cleaver once

A year when the blade became dull with hacks

Made at the sinews and bones from oxen.

Not Wen Hui's cook who had the same cleaver

For nineteen years. Cook slaughtered a thousand

Oxen with that Taoist cleaver, you know.

The secret: look for the spaces between

The joints. When tough joints came, he felt them, slowed

Down, sensed where an opening occurred, and

Went right for those sinews. Meat fell away

Like a plot of earth breaking in cracked hands.

He withdrew the blade from the ox. He let

Pleasure of the moment slip over him,

Wiping bloody cleaver on white apron.

*

M. G. Stephens has published many books, including the critically acclaimed novel The Brooklyn Book of the Dead; the travel memoir Lost in Seoul (Random House, 1990); and the award-winning essay collection Green Dreams.

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