All winter the magpies hid in the steeple
Dining on yarrow and bolweevil
And there were no people except for me
I came to the sea to write and to think
But I was so small next to my dreams
Like a mite who might try and cross the seas
In the year of the cock, I began as a flea

Springtime came, no words on the page
So the old sperm whale went looking for prey
When I found a dodo as hungry as me
I dragged her back to my lair by the sea
Pushing forward so awkwardly,
I laid her bare on the eucalyptus leaves
In the year of the cock, it was hard as can be

So I sat on her mantle like an old stuffed goose
The artist who says little and lets others choose
When I tried to finally break loose
She called me a skunk, a raccoon on the loot
She’d thought I was a rooster with the right kind of plumes
But I was only a chicken who had gone cuckoo
I was only a chicken, who had gone cuckoo

Just when I knew I was meant to be alone
I fell for a colt so young and so bold
Really? I said, “you could love an old goat?”
Sure he said but you’re more like a toad
Like raging rams we butted our horns
I was a female stag kicking down the door
But then like a fish let back into the brook
In the year of the cock, I let him off the hook

Then mother died, so I flew back to the states
But sister was a shark so the lions share was weasled away
And when I saw a girl I knew living on the street
A hard year went from bad to bleak
My skin broke out like when I was a kid
It was back to the clinic for tarbaths and treatments
And the doctors gave the same old speeches
In the year of the cock I was covered in leeches

And when at last I made it back to the steeple
The magpies stared at this strange man made feeble
By a year of lust and lost questions
A broken mind receives no lessons
If in fact I had fallen and cracked
Would I rise like a phoenix from the flames?
Or was I just an egg full of clay…
In the year of the cock, I crowed all night and all day