You Are What You Eat

          It's been around awhile, this belief 
about absorbing the qualities of things
          you eat. Galen's humors of bile and blood 
and phlegm; how love of foods with excessive
          heat may bring out fevers and aggression. 
Wild garlic and leeks, curries and bird 
          chilies— whatever peculiarities of alimentation 
are thought to reflect the kind of temperament 
          you favor: you are what you eat. And you,
you who heat your fragrant lunch of noodles 
           and dumplings in the school or office 
microwave; you, admiring smoky wreaths of blood 
           sausage at the grocer's and boiled fertilized ducks' 
eggs—you with your pounded taro and your sweet 
           purple yam: you are the savage who hasn't 
learned to civilize your appetite. Is myth more 
           bloated than narrative? What to make
of the man who, in the 1800s, wanted to eat
           everything, taste every animal on Earth? 
While lecturing at university, he liked to unnerve
           his students by shaking a hyena skull in their 
pallid faces. His favorite snack was mice 
          on toast. Once and only once, at a fancy 
dinner, guests passed part of the mummified heart 
          of King Louis XIV around the table— he 
promptly popped it into his mouth and swallowed.