Hi Matt,
"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" as Dylan once sang. I feel this chap to have been ravaged by the 'wolf-thing' called life, whether materially or in terms of emotional or mental strain, to such an extent that he is left with nothing, and yet ultimately finds some strange liberation in this. "His world's no longer made of offal" suggests some kind of spiritual transcendence beyond the flesh. The poem is darker and more sly than that interpretation suggests, though. We don't really know what he is thinking or feeling, we only have the speculations of the speaker/onlooker. And the closing couplet is deliciously sinister, with the suggestion that being devoured by the wolf-thing is an inevitability that we have to "steel ourselves" against. Maybe not all of us will survive the wolfish crucible as well as this chap. If indeed, he did.
It made me smile and it made me think. And as John says, it transported me to your own unique voice-world.
Mark
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