Feathers burn so easily, the cat is blinded in the garden
Last vision the lark is flame
The cattle shed gives off the smell of sunday kitchen
The gentle eye, the dispensable perfection
Before the flash takes two weeks food
Pile the sacks of earth and hide
All of us here know it, we grew it
Fighting amongst ourselves, leaving bits of flesh on barbed wire
A little blood on the floor
Locks and bars across the door
Well versed in violation
Our children beat each other in the garden
Our failure to accept the earth, we talk of love but push it to the edge
Push it to the edge
This is no natural aggression composing death
I am afraid for beauty when I see the fist
The perfect hand that turns against itself
The perfect hand that holds a gun or wields a butcher's blade
Or leads to death
Leads to death the used-up bull or incarcerates the hopeless fool
Or takes the forest with a single flame
Leaves the next an empty shell
Human kind condemns the hunting beast
Yet their own choice leaves behind such ragged meat
The military dream of blood
Their sweet wine flowing in the veins of men
Who work towards our bloody end
They fly Enola gaily, give birth to this waitingwaiting
Give us the reality of our hatred, give the earth nothing
Melting, goats dead on the green, dying lambs bleating by the wire
Three last days on the earth, I lay down to die in the grass