panegyric

I like to learn something new when I'm reading. In a poem, that might be a new word. Such was the case in reading a poem titled A Short Panegyric. I never heard of a panegyric.  

It is a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something. In the poem, it is in praise of meat.

The word comes from early 17th century French panégyrique, via Latin from Greek panēgurikos ‘of public assembly’, from pan ‘all’ + aguris ‘agora, assembly’.

That prose poem in praise of returning to meat-eating after an absence is:

Now that the vegetarian nightmare is over and we are back to

our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beautiful

habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let the

breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hungering
bodies. Let us march to market to embrace the butcher and
put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind us,
let us worship the roast or the stew that takes its place once
again at the sacred center of the dining room table.

"A Short Panegyric" by Mark Strand, from Almost Invisible